


Cold Day In Hell

by ckret2



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Asexual Alastor (Hazbin Hotel), Asexual Relationship, Bisexual Sir Pentious, Break Up, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Inaccurate Christianity, Canon-Typical Violence, Competent Sir Pentious, Demiromantic Asexual Alastor, Drinking, First Kiss, First Love, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Enemies, Friends to Lovers, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Period-Typical Homophobia, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Injuries, Non-Chronological, Partner Betrayal, Post-Break Up, Pre-Canon, Radiosnake, Romance, Self-Denial, Self-Destruction, Strangers to Lovers, Time Skips, Tragedy, commitment issues, fic research: my ace ass browsing an ace forum like "IS IT POSSIBLE to enjoy kiss? sounds fake", minor self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:33:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21776062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: "Our leading story today is the cold! For the first time since '48, Hell has hit freezing temperatures."There'sa real joke, isn't it?It'll be a cold day in hell before the Radio Demon falls in love.For the past fifteen years, Hell's most dangerous alliance has been the one between its two most powerful mortal overlords: the capricious Radio Demon and the nefarious Sir Pentious.For the next fifty-three years, Sir Pentious will struggle to reclaim the power and prestige that Alastor tore from him, and Alastor will struggle to pretend he never knew Sir Pentious at all.This is a love story. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, Alastor doesn't want to be in a love story.
Relationships: Alastor/Sir Pentious (Hazbin Hotel)
Comments: 68
Kudos: 313





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> In my head I've been thinking of this fic as an "aromantic horror story" because, for my own little ace/aro self, the idea of suddenly falling in love carries a sort of horror—not because love sounds like a bad place to fall, but because I'm so confident I can't that if I _did_ I'd feel like something terrifyingly _wrong_ must have happened inside my body. It's like how looking at your blue eyes in the mirror is normal, unless you had brown eyes last night. You might wanna go to the hospital for that.
> 
> Anyway if I fell in love I think I'd cope with it by, like, holding hands and filing joint taxes, like a normal person. If Alastor fell in love I think he'd cope with it by committing arson.
> 
> Some meta/headcanon posts that got incorporated into this fic:  
> \- [Sir P's airship has moving red eyes and so do other vehicles in Hell](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/189506868557)  
> \- [all of Sir P's eyespots seem to be real eyes](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/189506711937/thank-you-russian-hazbin-fandom-for-exploring-the)  
> \- [the dead sleep in the positions they died in](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/189404195827/time-for-a-dark-headcanon-the-positions)  
> \- [using his powers drains Alastor](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EKmggNnWkAASRff.png) (I canNOT find the original post)  
> \- the wiki specifies a couple of times that Sir P was a "supervillain," so I used that as my basis for his backstory
> 
> I'll be nice and not link all the research I did on Victorian & Jazz Age culture.

**1966, Morning**

"This is Tom Trench with 666 News, bringing you your morning report." In the corner of Alastor's vision, a half dozen Egg Bois are crowded on three chairs to watch the snowy black-and-white television bolted to the kitchen table.

Staring out the window and trying to ignore the eggs, Alastor sips his tea. He only barely suppresses the urge to pull a face. Disgusting. Who uses tea to get their caffeine fix when there's perfectly good coffee in the world? The word "caffeine" _comes_ from "coffee." And yet tea is the only thing available in this airship. The next time he spends the night, he'll have to bring a percolator and some coffee grounds—

_The next time_. Ha. What's happening to Alastor?

He takes another sip and fights back another grimace.

"For our first story of the day," Tom says, "I'm going to steal the weatherman's thunder." Alastor nearly chokes with laughter. He swallows his tea the wrong way and coughs shrill static. Does Tom know he's just made the best joke of his career? "Today's leading news is the cold! For the first time since '48, Hell has hit freezing temperatures. Most of you already know what _that_ means. We want to hear from you! Call or mail in to tell us the weirdest, wackiest things you experience today that you never thought you'd see happen. We'll have a special segment next week with all your best batshit insane stories! You can call us at..."

Alastor tries to tune out the broadcast. He doesn't needed the news to tell him the temperature—he felt it as soon as he woke up, a chill clinging to his hand and face where they were exposed beneath the heavy covers. It took a force of will to drag himself out of bed, tug on his shoes, search for a dressing gown, and look for caffeine. As he walked through the halls, distant boilers roared, pumping hot dry air through the vents.

Standing next to the window in the kitchen, he can feel the cold radiating off the glass.

Oh. He didn't made the connection until the news story, but _there's_ a real joke, isn't it? _It'll be a cold day in hell before the Radio Demon falls in love_. Har har. There's something to call in to 666 News. He wonders if anyone has ever actually said that, they've had over three decades to think it up. Probably not. A pity. It would have been hilarious.

Absolutely hilarious.

"Is your tea okay?"

Alastor glowers down at Egg #17. "What?"

"We saw you choking on it," the egg says worriedly. A couple of other eggs, standing on their chairs, nod in enthusiastic agreement.

He hadn't been _choking_ , but he isn't going to do his reputation any favors if he gets defensive. He sets his tea down on the table. "It's vile."

#17 grabs it up without asking and takes a sip. His shell face puckers up. "No wonder! You steeped it way too long." He hops to the ground and hustles away with Alastor's tea.

Alastor considers smashing him. No, that wouldn't make him a very good guest, would it?

He crosses his arms and stares out the window again, trying to focus on the gray horizon rather than the reflection of his own red eyes, and lets the cold seeping through the glass wake him up.

###

**1966, Last Night**

Alastor boarded Sir Pentious's airship yesterday evening.

Pentious had mentioned a few weeks ago that, aboard his primary airship—practically a flying castle by this point, the largest in his burgeoning fleet of now a couple dozen ships—he had just finished installing a new organ, and yes, he could play it. By that point, Pentious had already heard Alastor play the piano, _and_ the violin, _and_ sing, and so Alastor had thought it only fair to request that he hear Pentious's playing sometime.

Yesterday wasn't the first time they'd met without an ostensible business excuse, and it wasn't the first time Alastor had seen the inside of Pentious's castle of a flagship; but it was the first time Alastor had been on Pentious's flagship outside of business. And it was the first time he was invited into the great black-tiled ballroom, with the pipes of a monstrous organ dominating an entire wall.

Pentious really _could_ play the organ. Along with several more melodramatic melodies that sounded more befitting of a notorious supervillain, he also played—of all things—a couple of Joplin songs. Alastor recognized them from his childhood, but they certainly hadn't been written until after Pentious's death. "Rearranged for organ by yourssss truly," Pentious said smugly, dragging out that hiss _much_ longer than Alastor felt was strictly necessary. He wondered whether Pentious had just happened to already know the songs, or if he'd learned them specifically for this visit so he could show off with something Alastor would recognize. Pentious was _so_ eager to keep pace with developments in the living world, so eager to make sure he continued to impress those that had died after him. Alastor didn't understand why, but he wasn't about to complain when he'd just heard "Maple Leaf Rag" pumped out of massive lead pipes that were so loud he felt like they were trying to vibrate him into another plane of existence.

"This is a rough recreation of a Wurlitzer theatre organ," Pentious explained, raising his voice so Alastor could hear him over the music. "The sort I'm told used to play the musical accompaniment to movies before talkies caught on. I got the design from one of the men that built them in the 1910s." Raising his voice was hardly necessary; Alastor was already bent over Pentious's shoulder, hands loosely clasped behind his back, tilting his microphone cane back and forth in time to the music like a metronome, watching as Pentious's hands flew over the organ's five keyboards and listening attentively to every word. "Although not a perfect design. No blueprints, of course."

"Of course. You can't take it with you, after all."

"Well." Pentious gave Alastor a sly look, head tilted and smirk stretched from one side of his face to the other. Fangs glinted dimly in both his mouth and hatband. " _Most_ of us can't."

Underneath the booming of the organ was the faint sound of a studio audience laughing. Alastor's grin widened. "I stand corrected," he said. "You're quite right, Sir Pent. _Most_ of us can't."

Alastor and Sir Pentious were two of a kind, unlike any of the other damned souls trapped in hell: both had arrived in the afterlife possessing the sort of power that most mere mortals couldn't build up even after millennia to adjust to their new "lives" in Hell. Everyone knew about Alastor's power—he'd made sure everyone knew. The terrible Radio Demon, his massacre broadcast far and wide across the nine circles—hah! Oh, that was an entrance no one would ever forget.

His power was overt. His was magic, demonic. His was spiritual, ethereal.

Sir Pentious's was mental. He was a mechanical mastermind who had appeared in hell with the designs for hundreds of death machines stored in his head, tucked neatly beneath his watchful hat, and he dreamed up more with the ease and speed with which most of of Hell's denizens thought up new repugnant things to shout at each other on the street. When Alastor had cleared out several of the established demons, Sir Pentious had been one of the first and few mortals who was immediately prepared to take advantage of the new voids in Hell's pantheon.

He seized power in Hell using only the capabilities and technology that had been available to him in his mortal life—that had been available to _any_ mortal—and yet, he was holding on to that power.

And that had deeply impressed Alastor. Impressed, and entertained.

It still did, as he looked over the organ that Pentious had designed himself based on a dead organ builder's partially-recalled blueprints.

"It's been decades since I've seen a fine instrument like this," Alastor said, gaze lifting from the keyboards to admire the pipes above. "There was one I heard all the time when I saw pictures at the Saenger Theatre—a Robert Morton, I think. Two thousand pipes. Beautiful." He wondered if the organ was still at the Saenger, or if talkies had killed it. He lowered his gaze back to Pentious and his organ's five keyboards, smile quirking wider again. "It only had four keyboards, though."

"'Manuals,' not 'keyboards,'" Pentious said lightly, "when you're talking about an organ. To tell them apart from the pedalboard."

Right, Alastor had nearly forgotten that was down there. He tilted sideways a bit to watch Pentious working the pedals with the tip of his tail. "I stand corrected again." This was the longest he'd ever gotten to talk to an organist about their instrument. He nodded toward Pentious's tail on the pedalboard. "Don't you usually need two feet for that? Or is a tail all you need if you've got enough practice?"

" _Ugh_ , no. Every song expects you to play two notes at once. Unless I arranged it for organ myself, I've got to pick and choose my favorite note." In the process of dramatically rolling his eyes, Pentious leaned back so far that his shoulder almost brushed Alastor's chest. "Someday I'm going to get around to adding levers in front of the manuals to work the pedalboards."

Alastor tried to imagine Pentious trying to work levers with his elbows while playing. "Well, if you ever need someone to lend a hand—or a foot, as the case may be—" (the studio audience chuckled appreciatively) "—I'd be happy to play a duet in exchange for an organ lesson."

The smile Pentious gave him—hood half-flared and fangs gleaming and half a dozen pink-red eyes staring up at him in adoration—made some dial in Alastor's chest stutter between stations, filling him with static. "You've got a deal."

Alastor stood straight up behind Pentious, one hand holding his cane to the small of his back, the other rubbing his knuckles into his sternum until he could get a clear signal from himself again.

###

**1966, Morning**

"Next up, a recent arrival to Hell, here to update us on mortal affairs. It's good to have a fellow vet on air with me. I understand you come to us with news from the front in Vietnam—" There's a soft snowy static sound like the TV is changing channels, and then Sir Pentious's voice: "MINIONS! What are you doing sitting around?! Our guest is missing, I want to know wh—Oh, _hello_ , Alastor."

Pentious is so open with his emotions. Alastor can never quite decide whether it's endearing or embarrassing. Right now, when it's aimed at him—even on a black and white screen, he could see how quickly Pentious's eyes light up—it's endearing. Will that last?

"Sir Pent! Good morning!" He bows theatrically. "I hope you don't mind that I went looking for breakfast. I didn't want to wake you." He glances around, trying to figure out how Pentious is watching him—ah, and there it is, one of the pinkish-ruby mechanical eyes that fill all Pentious's machines. It's embedded in the same wall as the windows and straining sideways to focus on Alastor; he saunters to the other side of the table so that it can see him more easily.

"No, of course not, my dear!" Pentious pauses. "... Except that you left with my dressing gown. And it's cold." Alastor notes that Pentious seems to be wrapped up to his chin in a dark quilt.

"Ah, so I did." He shrugs apologetically. "I didn't come prepared to spend the night. Shall I return it?"

" _Please_ do."

Alastor waits until the screen has returned to the news before he glances back at the mechanical spying eye and winks at it. It quickly looks away. It's all wires and electricity with Pentious, mingling together with all the novel tricks he's been cooking up since the 1860s. Always steaming full speed ahead toward the twenty-first century. Now it's moving mechanical eyes; soon it's going to be ray guns straight out of some cheesy science fiction serial, Alastor is sure.

And then, not very long until something that can overthrow demigods.

###

**1966, Last Night**

After Pentious had performed a while, delightedly showing off how his massive theatre organ could replicate the sound of a full orchestra, Alastor returned the favor: he treated Pentious to a whole ballroom of specters, shadows summoning up music from nowhere, a whole jazz band seemingly concealed behind dark corners and strange lights as Alastor conducted them from the center of the room, twirling and singing along to his music.

And Pentious said, wistfully, that he missed dancing.

Alastor dances; but only rarely. He doesn't like being touched. _Touching_ , fine; _being touched_ , no. The touch of other people drags him from the rarefied atmosphere of radio waves and sound waves back into the realm of the corporeal, trapping him back in his body—and not only that, but back in his body with someone else's hands pawing at it.

He can put up with others' touches long enough for a dance or two, especially if he's leading. It was a damn shame, he'd always thought, that so much of the world of dance required a partner, because he'd do it much more if there were more solo styles.

But last night, he never even thought about touch. He simply stretched out a hand to Pentious and said, "Well, why don't you?"

Pentious huffed. "I have a little trouble keeping up with the _footwork_." He waved the tip of his tail.

"I'm sure we can find a way around a little problem like that!" Trumpets faintly playing from nowhere, Alastor spun theatrically up to Pentious, half-bowed, and held out a hand. "Would you do me the honor?" He tapped his foot in time to the music as he waited.

Pentious looked around, eyes wide, like he honestly thought there was the slightest chance in Hell that Alastor was asking anyone but him. "Oh, come now." Alastor crooked a finger. "You're not going to leave me waiting all night, are you? Come on down from the audience."

Pentious reached out hesitantly. "Oh... very well."

The studio audience applauded as soon as Pentious took Alastor's hand. "There's a good sport! Welcome to the show."

Pentious hissed a laugh as Alastor tugged him upright. "I've wondered for _yearss_ how you do that."

"How's that?" Alastor led him to the center of the room.

"The applause, the laughter, et cccetera. Is it some sort of..." he waved his free hand vaguely, "magical recordings? Or is it a... I don't know how magic works—something produced based on your feelings?" He hesitated a moment, deciding whether to put his free hand on Alastor's waist or shoulder. "Or do you actually have a captive audience locked up somewhere?"

With one finger, Alastor guided Pentious's hand to Alastor's hip. The lead moved less than the follow in most dances Alastor knew—tighter footwork, smaller turns—so if they were trying to find a way for Pentious to dance with that tail of his, he'd probably have better success as the lead. Even if that meant Alastor would have to be an unusually insistent follow. "Which answer do you like best?"

Pentious gave him an unimpressed look. "The correct one, obviously."

"Ah ah, that's not the game we're playing."

"Fine. Then I like the third one best."

Of course he did. The sadistic one, the one that gave Alastor power over even more helpless souls. A bell dinged from nowhere. "Then we'll say that's the correct one."

"Hhha." Pentious tried not to smile and failed.

"So," Alastor said, "how shall we start? You strike me as a fan of the waltz. Are you?"

They'd been dancing a couple of minutes before Alastor realized what he was feeling. It took that long because what he realized was that he wasn't feeling anything at all. He hardly noticed where they touched.

Holding Pentious's hand felt like holding something harmless, something familiar, like the cane of his own microphone. None of the grating rasping of nerves that came from the edges of two people's souls rubbing raw against each other, the unpleasant bumping up against another person's existence, that he usually had to put up with when he danced. Pentious's hand fit on his waist like a belt—secure, constant, unnoticed—Alastor's fit on Pentious's shoulder as lightly as though he was simply running his fingers down a banister. There was no reaction. It all felt very... safe. It all felt so natural.

_That_ was the word. Natural.

It felt natural.

###

**1966, Morning**

"Here's your tea, Mr. Demon, sir!"

Alastor shoots Egg #17 a withering look. "I beg your pardon?"

Egg #17 shrinks down, lowering the cup of tea with him. Another egg whispers loudly, "I think it's Mr. Radio."

"Mr. Radio, sir?" #17 tries.

Alastor rolls his eyes. But he bends down, snatches up the cup, and takes a sip.

Yep. Still tastes like tea. Watery tea.

"Is it better?" #17 asks eagerly.

" _Hm._ " He decides not to answer, pressing his mouth shut in a thin, tight smile. Instead, he stalks out of the kitchen, heading back toward Pentious's bedroom.

###

**1966, Last Night**

It took a few thick shadows, a handful of spectral assistants, and some heavy temporary separations from the usual the physics of Hell for Alastor to give Pentious the ability to dance; but it wasn't long before he figured out exactly what it took for him to let Pentious effortlessly glide across the floor without making it feel like Alastor was doing all the work.

They were spinning around the room—with Alastor's hand pressed to the small of Pentious's back to hold him close (they'd switched leads) and Pentious's arm flung around Alastor's neck as he cackled with glee and tried to keep up—when Pentious said, "When I'm the ruler of Hell, I want to dance up to my throne like this!"

Alastor assumed that Pentious meant "this enthusiastically" rather than "how we're dancing right now," since _right now_ they were unsuccessfully attempting to replicate a dance Alastor had seen a couple times in life but never learned himself; it involved the lead spinning the follow head-over-heels. Or head-over-tail, as the case may be. They'd fallen a few times. They could take it. What was the worst that could happen to them, broken necks?

He lifted Pentious for another try, realized halfway through that this was going to end with another fall, stopped and teetered for a moment before finding his balance with one hand on Pentious's waist and the other supporting him under his tail; Pentious dug his sharp claws into Alastor's shoulders for stability. In the artificial night that had clouded the ballroom, his flared hood's eyespots and wide eyes glowed almost neon magenta against bluish-black snakeskin.

"Sir Pent, on the day that you conquer Hell? I'm going to be the first one there, conducting the music for your coronation."

Pentious wrapped his tail around the back of Alastor's thighs, and that was all it took for Alastor to know what was coming next. Alastor tilted his head back and shut his eyes, and Pentious ran his hands through Alastor's magenta-glowing hair and bent down to kiss him.

Somewhere very far away, the studio audience erupted in cheers and applause.

###

**1966, Morning**

Pentious is sitting waiting on the bed when Alastor arrives, and he is, indeed, wrapped in a quilt. It's all dark irregular patches of fabric stitched together with vivid multicolor threads, very distinctive, and yet Alastor doesn't remember seeing it last night; had it been on the bed and he hadn't even noticed, or had Pentious pulled it out this morning? Alastor hopes it wasn't on the bed. He'd like to imagine he isn't getting _that_ distractible.

"Special delivery, one dressing gown," Alastor says. He holds out the cup and saucer. "And one tea. I thought it might help with the cold."

For a moment, it seems like Pentious's entire face exists just to frame his smile. What a gorgeous smile. " _Ssso_ thoughtful of you." What a precious hiss. Alastor feels the corners of his smile thaw. Pentious reaches out from his quilt to claim the tea first; Alastor sets the saucer aside on the bedside table.

"It's brewed exsspertly. I thought you don't like tea?" Pentious takes another sip. "Most amateurs make it too strong."

"I'm a fiend of many talents." Alastor reaches for the belt of the dressing gown. "I suppose you'll be wanting this back, too?"

"Hhhm." Pentious slowly eyes him up and down, eyes narrowed, the slits of his pupils widening. "Keep it on for a while. You look nice in dark gray."

"You don't look half bad in a quilt." The studio audience titters.

Pentious's tail, visible through the quilt in a loose coil around himself, curls in tighter—a snake's equivalent, Alastor supposes, to scooting over slightly to invite someone to sit. He hesitates—all of the sudden sitting on a bed together seems too intimate, as though last night he met some intimacy quota he hadn't known existed until he wildly overshot it. But he gingerly sits anyway, leaving several inches between himself and Pentious.

The tip of Pentious's tail flicks out from under the quilt and drags over the fabric of the dressing gown. Alastor feels it like a line of fire traveling down the side of this thigh.

###

**1966, Last Night**

Ghostly shadows and disconnected darkness that Alastor couldn't quite control drifted across the hall as Pentious half-led, half-dragged him down the hall toward his bedroom; like black storm clouds across a clear sky, like a dark afterimage blurring the vision after a flash of light. Alastor was trying to keep up, both mentally and physically, with what exactly had happened the last few minutes. That was the third kiss he'd had in his entire pre- _and_ post-mortem existence, but the first time he'd a mouth on his mouth without wanting to gag against it, and he was still trying to come to grips with the fact that it was, in fact, possible for him to end a kiss with any emotion other than relief.

At some point he smacked an Egg Boi out of their way with the microphone on his cane like he was hitting a ball with a croquet mallet, to the sound of a nasty whine of microphone static and a laugh from Pentious that ran up Alastor's spine and exploded in his chest like fireworks.

The moment the door was shut, Pentious stretched up to try to recapture Alastor's lips, couldn't maintain his balance that far down his tail, and sent them both crashing to the floor with Pentious on top. And then the mass of a wide tail pressing Alastor's knees apart and weighing on his hips, and then sharp fingertips fumbling to unbutton his high collar—he was pretty sure he lost a button somewhere in the process—and then thin lips and the thinner tips of fangs against his neck—it left him feeling dizzy, seeing stars. Somehow between the door and the floor Alastor had managed to tug his gloves off without consciously noticing he was doing so, and he ran his hands up Pentious's sides, feeling the texture of cool scales under his fingertips, feeling the shape of his body as he ran his hands from snake tail to half-and-half hips to human waist, sliding beneath Pentious's long frock coat up to the hem of his waistcoat as he went.

The sharp fingertips that had squeezed between their bodies to fumble with Alastor's coat buttons slid down and reached for his belt; and then, with an unpleasant jolt, Alastor remembered what exactly most of the rest of the human race expected to come next when two tangled people kissing on the floor start trying to get each other's clothes off.

Alastor tried to clear his throat—the garbled noise of a dial abruptly switching to a different station. Voice unusually stiff and volume a bit louder than he intended, he said, "H—Could you hold on for just a moment, there, my good fellow."

"Hhhn?" Pentious paused, lips still brushed up against the skin of Alastor's throat, the tip of one nail running back and forth just between his waistband and his skin. Alastor automatically tried to press his knees together, but instead only managed to press them around Sir Pentious's tail—which was the opposite of the signal he was trying to send. He flattened his legs to the floor instead.

In his most professional broadcaster voice—all Mid-Atlantic, not an ounce of New Orleans—he went on, "While I would like to make clear that I've enjoyed everything _up to_ this point—I'm _not_ going to enjoy what's coming next. So let's keep the following scene Hays Code-compliant, shall we?"

"You're not worried about being caught, are you?" Pentious murmured against Alastor. "In my fortress in the sky? Who could punish us? Who would _dare?_ " The forked tip of his tongue flicked against Alastor's throat. "I thought the Radio Demon was _fearlessss_."

Oh, high praises and sweet touches like that were far too divine for a damned sinner like him. His eyelids started to slide shut. And then the claw teasing at his waistband twitched and Alastor was straight back in Hell, with a pitchfork prodding threateningly just above his bellybutton. Firmly, he said, "The Radio Demon _isn't_ afraid. He's _disinterested_."

Pentious jerked his head up, staring at Alastor in bafflement; then the briefest flash of rage; then embarrassed resignation. "... Ah." Alastor's palms were still on Pentious's waist, his fingertips meeting just over Pentious's spine; he could feel Pentious's ribs sink down as he let out a long, slow sigh, like a balloon deflating. "Right." Pentious dragged himself back maybe half a foot—not a lot, but enough that his scaly underside was no longer pressed over Alastor's groin, which alone was a huge relief. "As you wish. I got... carried away. I should have made sure you're... into..." Pentious cast a resentful glance back over his shoulder, lifting the tip of his tail up so he could glare at it properly before it flopped back to the floor with a solid _thwack_. "If it makes any difference, I assure you, my equipment isss... _mostly_ normal. Not quite _perfectly_ human, but—not as weird as the tail suggestss."

Alastor had expected Pentious to take that the wrong way. But it had put a halt to the proceedings, now he could explain properly. "No, that isn't—"

"I mean—there _are_ two, but that's honestly as strange as it gets. Practically an asset, really!"

"—not what I—" The words registered and Alastor stared blankly at Pentious. " _Sorry?_ "

Pentious winced, tongue flicking out as he hissed in embarrassment. "Too much?"

Much more than he'd had any interest in finding out. "Now, hold on a moment," he said, propping himself on one elbow and putting a finger under Sir Pentious's chin to tilt his head into making eye contact. "Let's get one thing straight. _You_ , my friend, I am _completely_ interested in—top hat to tail tip and every inch in between. It's the _activity itself_ I'm disinterested in."

Comprehension dawned in Pentious's eyes. Good, they were making progress.

"Now, if that's going to be an issue, tell me now and I'll gladly leave." Not gladly; but as long as he left smiling, who would tell the difference? "This is a non-negotiable point. If that's just going to make both of us miserable, then—better for us to kill this thing before we get too attached to it, don't you think?"

"Oh, please!" A crooked smile stretched across Pentious's face, to Alastor's secret relief. With faux grandeur, fingertips splayed around the eye in his chest, he said, "I am a _Victorian_ gentleman. Pining forever for my dapper companion's eminently desirable but eternally unattainable physique is what we _do_." He said this with a haughtiness that suggested this should have been obvious to Alastor. "And we have lube now. I'll make do by myself."

"If that's good enough for you, then it's good enough for me." Alastor sank back down to the ground, relieved.

Pentious slid back up to his prior position—this time, thankfully, without teasing at Alastor's belt buckle. He placed his elbows to either side of Alastor's chest, laced his hands, and cradled his chin on his fingers. "I'm surprised you _are_ disinterested, my dear. I would have expected you to... have a colder demeanor about the whole subject."

The studio audience booed. Pentious immediately winced, his hood flattened against his neck and his shoulders hunched.

Alastor raised an eyebrow. "Says the cold-blooded cobra to the warm-blooded buck?"

"No, I meant—! I've _met_ other people who have no interest in erotic matters. They're usually lessssss... _interested_ , in physical contact of any sort. Inssisstently sso." Pentious paused. "And I never caught any of them sticking their hands up the bottom of someone else's shirt."

Alastor couldn't say that _he'd_ ever had any interest in prying up someone's shirt before now (unless it was in the process of body disposal), but he wasn't quite willing to confess that much about his past experience. He'd doled out details about his past to Pentious in tiny dollops up until now, and the thought of changing that now was... uncomfortable. "Perhaps your friends thought they had to act _particularly_ disinterested just to keep less gentlemanly suitors than yourself away. I find that all I have to do to dispel unwanted attention is _**say my name**._" Reality flickered and hissed with the Radio Demon's words, going red and fuzzy.

He felt Pentious shiver on top of him. He didn't think it was a fearful shiver. He took the opportunity to resume sliding a hand beneath Pentious's shirt. Pentious shivered again. "I'm not complaining, but I'm not sure what _you're_ getting out of this."

"You were a cultured man, Sir Pent; didn't you ever visit a museum to admire the masterful marble statues?" Alastor asked. "You can admire a fine piece of artwork without wanting to sink your... _teeth_ into it, so to speak. Myself, I just don't have an appetite for marble." A polite laugh from the studio audience for some hinting-at-impolite comments; although the moment the words were out of his mouth, Alastor found himself wondering whether other people _were_ aroused by statues. If he couldn't make sense of the fact that most men found ladies more lovely the less clothes they had on, no matter how fashionable the garments they were shedding, then what did he know about what went through their minds when they looked at the Venus de Milo?

Pentious tittered. "Well put." And then, spine flexing under Alastor's hand like a rolling wave, snakelike all the way, Pentious reared up. " _Ssso_. A masssterful marble sstatue, am I?" For a serpent, his grin very much reminded Alastor of the Cheshire cat. "A fine piesse of artwork?"

"Bernini could have sculpted no finer."

"I suppossse you'd like to see the resst."

Looking up at Pentious like this, looking at him as a piece of art rather than a mere doomed mortal—for a moment he truly did look like a living statue carved out of black marble, stone scales shining—a statue that someone had tossed fabric clothing on to conceal parts of the sculpture. And maybe, for just a second, Alastor _did_ understand why some people wanted to see others with less clothes rather than more, even if he didn't share their ultimate goal. "I suppose I would."

"An aesssthetic appreciation," Pentious murmured, delicately undoing his buttons—coat, waistcoat, shirt. "Hhm. I can enjoy that." He slid all three layers off his narrow shoulders together and flared his hood. Wow. The scales really did cover him all the way. Like snakeskin stretched over human skin, hiding all mammalian features—smooth stomach, smooth chest. Strange and lovely.

Pentious tilted his head. "Your smile looks different when it's real."

"Does it?" Alastor didn't wait for an answer before gliding his hands up Pentious's back and tugging him down.

###

**1966, Morning**

Pentious draws his tail tip away from Alastor's thigh—Alastor isn't sure if Pentious is disappointed by his lack of a reaction, or if all he wanted to do was acknowledge his presence. Alastor can't quite bring himself to look over and see. So instead he pretends he's not thinking about it.

After a moment with nothing but the faint hiss of dead air between them, Pentious says, self-consciously, "I, ahh... I'm not... I don't really know how to handle... mornings after."

That makes two of them. But any attempts to commiserate die in Alastor's throat, coming out as soft static; empathizing feels like intimacy, like too much intimacy, like stripping himself utterly naked. He can't stand that thought right now. He already feels inexplicably exposed. Maybe because of the lack of pants.

He tilts his head toward Pentious, though—lets him know Alastor is listening.

Pentious leans over to set his cup on its saucer before he continues. "With my wife, I could..." He drifts off vaguely, and for a moment Alastor can sense, in some inexplicable way, just how very old Pentious really is. Alastor supposes he himself is old, now, too. Far older than he looks. Far older than he'll ever look. They both are. "But, well." Alastor can feel Pentious's shrug, how it shifts the air and the weight on the mattress, without having to see it. "We weren't sharing a bed until we were married, of course. That's... how it was. All courtship, no _dating_."

Alastor wonders if they've been dating. He supposes they have. He never realized.

"These days," Pentious waves a hand, "everyone seems to sstart out with sleeping together and decide where to go from there, hahh. It—it feels strange. Doesn't it?"

"It does."

When Pentious sets his hand on the cover, it's an inch away from Alastor's.

Nervously, Pentious says, "But I... sssuppossse it doesssn't feel... _bad_. Does it?"

"No, it doesn't."

There's nothing Alastor wants more than to slide his hand over and slip his fingers between Pentious's. He wants it so much it feels like his ribs are buzzing with stinging static electricity. He wants it so much he nearly forgets how to breathe.

###

**1966, Last Night**

With any carnal activities taken safely off the table, Pentious managed to coax Alastor out of his coat, his shirt, and his shoes, socks, and pants. It didn't take much coaxing. Alastor insisted on keeping his briefs and undershirt. He was sure Pentious must have been disappointed, but he didn't show it. Alastor found himself deeply, inexplicably grateful.

They hung Pentious's top hat on Alastor's microphone cane, propped them up by the door, told them to get acquainted with each other, and tried to pretend this wasn't as absurdly funny as they both knew it was.

"I admit—I wasn't actually expecting hooves." Pentious wasn't looking at Alastor's legs at that point—even though they were helpfully draped across Pentious's naked lap—but rather into his shoes. "How do you walk in these? They look normal on the outside, but they _must_ be custom..."

"Raised heels on the inside," Alastor said. "I'm given to understand some fellows wear them to look taller. In my case they just help cope with that..." he wiggled one foot, "stiletto heel effect I've got here."

"I don't think it's called that."

"I don't know much about deer."

Alastor traced Pentious's every rib, every vertebrae, his collarbones, his shoulder blades, mapping human bones beneath serpent skin. Pentious lay a hand on Alastor's chest to feel how his lungs hummed when his voice switched stations, asked what color his eyes had been before they were red, whether his skin had once seemed less washed out, and for some reason he answered. Pentious kissed the X on Alastor's forehead, and Alastor asked how Pentious's death was marked.

"It's getting late," Pentious said, after his third yawn. "Are you staying?"

"Am I invited?"

"Alastor, you've been invited since I asked you to come see my organ."

Alastor had thought _he'd_ asked if he could come see the organ.

In over thirty years of life and over thirty years of death, he'd never wanted to touch. Never wanted to _cuddle_. Never wanted to embrace, to caress, to hold tight to someone in the night. He never wanted company. He never wanted a second shape disturbing the patterns his limbs made as he slept.

But that night, he had one arm curled around Pentious's waist, one leg thoroughly tangled up with his tail, and one open eye softly illuminating Pentious's sleeping face in a red glow, and it felt like the most natural place in the universe to be.

And that terrified him.

###

**1966, Morning**

Pentious's little finger slips toward Alastor's hand at the same time Alastor pulls his hands into his lap and laces them between his knees.

For a second Pentious freezes; and then his hand disappears into his quilt. He goes on like nothing happened: "The few people I've shared a bed with since then, I—never spent the night and never let them. No morning after to worry about." He laughed nervously. "Hhow am I doing?"

"I have absolutely zero basis for comparison! I've never woken up in a bed that wasn't my own." Sharing that trivia about his life now feels safer than it did last night, when now he can use it to fend off more intimate questions. Keep the conversation on facts rather than on feelings and it'll stay safe. "Not while its owner was _occupying_ it, at any rate. This is my very first time."

"Really?" Pentious shifts his weight next to Alastor; Alastor fights the urge to look over and see how. "I shouldn't be surprised. You never married and you're not interested in sexual activity... at all?" He asks like he's double-checking the full extent of his disinterest.

Ding ding ding. "I have never felt the slightest erotic interest, toward anyone, ever."

What if that changes, though? He's never felt anything like _this_ , either. He's never danced with someone and experienced the body pressed against his as a soul resonant with his own soul, rather than as a piece of pulsing meat he has to endure for the benefit of the physical activity. He's never had a kiss that he melted into, rather than experienced as a series of moist rubbery flaps trying to worm their way through his teeth so they can trigger his gag reflex. He's never wanted to _hug_ someone, much less coil himself about another body all night. Maybe carnal interest is simply the inevitable next step, as it seems to be for so many lovelorn couples he's seen and heard stories of who scramble into bed together as soon as they can justify it to themselves. Maybe he's going to wake up at three in the morning from dreams of double dicks.

That doesn't seem like him.

But none of this seems like him.

He feels momentarily trapped in the room, as if the door he can see from the bed is locked, as if he's losing the power to lift his own limbs and get to his feet, as if the air has become as thick and unmoving as steel and he can't force it into and out of his lungs.

"Alastor?" Pentious's fingertips brush his thigh.

Alastor shoots to his feet, and then he realizes Pentious said something before he touched Alastor that Alastor didn't register at all, and then he needs to think up an excuse for what he's doing standing. "It's—stuffy in here, isn't it?"

Pentious stares at him from the depth of his quilt bundle. "It's freezing."

"You know what they say: one man's freezing is another man's..." That sounds stupid. He switches stations. "Anyway, you can't tell, you're a reptile." He scoops his pants off the floor, kicks his shoes off and pulls the pants on.

Dubiously, Pentious asks, "You're hot?"

"Melting!" The sounds of a sizzling frying pan follow him around. It's not entirely untrue; he can feel a cold sweat running down his back. "I return this to you." He takes off the dressing gown, throws it to the bed beside Pentious, and picks up his wrinkled shirt from the floor. "Look at this. I don't usually think of myself as the type to have so much fun I leave the next morning in the same clothes I came in the night before, but I suppose there's a first time for everything!"

"You're melting," Pentious says, "and your solution is to put on more clothes?"

The studio audience laughs like it's a joke instead of a veiled accusation. "I'm going for a walk," Alastor says, hastily buttoning his shirt. "To find some fresh air. I assume this snake nut can has some of that somewhere?"

"Of course it—this snake _what?_ "

"Hah! You've never seen a—? I won't ruin the surprise for you." He pulls on his jacket and steps back into his shoes; they re-lace themselves as he picks up his cane. "For you." He holds out the cane by the tip so Pentious can claim his hat from the top.

Pentious gives him a suspicious look, but puts his hat back on. Now they're both giving him suspicious looks. Alastor almost stops right there, gazing into Pentious's eyes, inexplicably tickled by his sour expression. Half of him wants to sit down next to him, fling an arm around him, quilt and all, and not stop chattering at him until he's grinning—

And the other half of him is terrified of the instant pull Pentious has on his mood.

The moment is broken by the microphone grumbling, "It's about time. I couldn't see a thing in there!"

"That was more or less the idea," Alastor says wryly. He tucks the cane under an arm so he can re-button his misbuttoned shirt as he heads to the door. "Toodles."

"Wait!"

Alastor freezes in the open door.

"You're not _leaving_ leaving, right?" Pentious asks. "I mean—you're..."

While Pentious tries to get his words figured out, Alastor says, "I'll be on the ship, never you fear." The door shuts behind him. He fastens his coat as he hurries down the hall.

His coat's missing a button.

###

**1965, The Year Before**

Sometimes Alastor wondered about the differences between Heaven and Hell.

He couldn't imagine a Heaven where he'd feel at home. Maybe they'd have some of the things he needed up there—surely they had radio stations, and his _perfect_ afterlife would involve having a station to himself. But half his favorite songs would probably never play in Heaven. And what was the fun of life if _all_ he had was his radio station? Sure, he supposed he could still sing and perform, and probably cook, as well—probably easier to get fresh okra in Heaven, but... No seedy bars to drop into where on a good energetic night he could see a gunfight, no friends whose idea of a good time was trying to clear a rival gang out of a building without bringing the building itself down?

What was the fun of life without the occasional massacre?

If Heaven was, indeed, perfect, then perhaps they were lenient about those sorts of things. Perhaps there were sub-Heavens, compartments where people could live out their ideal afterlives—playgrounds where one could get away with all of the things a little Heaven-bound soul never got to get away with in life. If that was the case, then making it into Heaven wasn't really a test of virtue, was it? It was more a test of self-control when waiting for delayed gratification.

And maybe that _was_ what Heaven and Hell were actually about. Not morality, but self-control. What did Alastor know? He'd never seen the other side, he couldn't compare.

But somehow he doubted that was the case. It stretched Alastor's willing suspension of disbelief just a bit farther than it could endure to imagine that in Heaven, you got to do the sort of things that would otherwise have automatically excluded you from admission. Somehow, he thought that the only kind of people who made it into Heaven were the kind of people who wouldn't want to do all the things Alastor suspected people wouldn't be allowed to do in Heaven.

He'd been told all his life that people ended up in Hell because they _belonged_ in Hell, and oh so many people took that to mean they ended up in Hell because they _deserved_ the worst that Hell could give them. (He'd heard that much less often since _arriving_ in Hell, where quite a few residents adamantly maintained that they did not deserve to be there at all.) But maybe what _belonging_ in Hell actually meant was _fitting in_ in Hell.

Maybe it meant if you were a killer, a pervert, a fighter, a burglar, you were sent to the place where you could kill, perv, fight, or burgle to your wicked little heart's content. Maybe Heaven only held the things that most humans _thought_ they wanted—stability, safety, kindness, compassion—but that in truth a good many humans were happy to trade away in exchange for the dirty things they wanted even more. So many sinned despite the dire warnings about the consequences because they desperately _wanted_ those sins, even if they did a poor job admitting it—why should they stop wanting those sins just because they died?

Perhaps those that went to Heaven weren't the lucky ones. Perhaps they _all_ were. Perhaps everyone was sent to the place where they would be happiest. If Alastor had to choose between clean streets with white picket fences and comfortable suburban homes, and dingy alleyways lined with brothels and paved with crushed needles—he'd choose the one where he was free to axe a man in the chest and walk away laughing.

Did he know anyone else who'd feel differently?

What of Sir Pentious, with his weaponized warships in the sky, his ambitions of usurpation and subjugation? Merrily building an army and expanding his reach, cackling with delight every time he got to use another new weapon of his on moving targets. Heaven was no place to nurture the ambitions of those eager to overthrow the local ruler. Wasn't Lucifer himself proof of that?

Alastor had never heard Sir Pentious voice a word of remorse for the actions that dropped him into Hell—not even of the "I don't regret them but I wish they hadn't brought me here" sort Alastor heard so often. In fact, it was safe to say Sir Pentious didn't so much _drop_ into Hell as _swan dive_. He was gleeful when he discussed his past crimes and just as gleeful when he discussed his future ones, viciously proud of where they'd taken him, treating his position in Hell as a glorious affirmation that he was just evil as he'd always considered himself to be. There was absolutely no doubt, Sir Pentious _belonged_ —Sir Pentious _fit in_ —down here in Hell, with Alastor.

Perhaps Hell was Alastor's private Heaven.

###

**1966, Morning**

It's only pacing, Alastor tells himself, if you stop and turn back the direction you came from. As long as you keep moving forward in the same direction, it's not pacing. It's just walking purposefully. All he has to do is keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving.

The halls alternate between stuffy and dry from the heating system struggling to keep the ship adequately warm, and chill and still. Alastor finds himself alternating between sweating and freezing, his perspiration making his clothes cling clammily to his back. He'd like to tell himself that the cold sweat is from the weather, but he doesn't know if he can. The weather doesn't usually affect him like this—he's sound and static, he's not supposed to be touched by temperature.

He feels like he has a fever.

He needs to make a decision. Right now. There are two different paths stretching out in front of him, and choosing one will close off the other one to him forever. Which path he chooses will determine who and what he is for the rest of his existence. He has a few minutes to make his decision.

One path is dark and twisting and uncertain, lined with briars higher than he is tall, coated in thorny vines, blooming with strange roses. That path means putting half of his life in someone else's hands, making himself half-helpless to someone else's whims. That path means that his fate will be controlled by someone he can never fully control. That path means that, in exchange, he will have partial control over someone else's fate—and because of that, if anything happens to the other person, it will burn Alastor just as badly as if he himself received the wound. It means carefully slicing himself open, peeling open his skin, letting someone else touch his bones and feel his muscles and reach under his ribs to hold his heart.

It will be the end of being a single, solid, self-contained person, because part of him will live forever inside of somebody else—and even if things go wrong, even if they lose each other, he's never going to get that piece back. Once it's gone, his shape will change. He will become something different, some strange incomprehensible creature, one of the uncanny specters he encountered throughout his life and even now in Hell still encounters over and over, passing every day on the streets: people shuffling along like pathetic zombies, their spirits belonging to someone else and their bodies driven to obey their masters' whims. He will become a creature that feels love.

And he will gain a future that _could_ be beautiful—he's always been told that love _can_ be beautiful—but that future is uncertain and unknown and could destroy him. And he will gain the companion that he so desperately wants to hold tight to his chest, but at the cost of being chained to that companion. Every boon comes with a burden if he chooses this path.

Pursuing love means selling his soul—and anyone who lives in Hell for more than few months and keeps his ears open knows what _that_ means. You can buy _anything_ if you sell your soul. You can buy infinite wealth, untold power, fame, glory, happiness, yes, you _can_ buy happiness, and yes, it _will_ be real happiness—but it will cost you your soul. For Alastor to grasp at all of the things that Sir Pentious could offer him, first, he has to give up who he is. He will never be himself again.

Could anything on that path be worth losing himself?

The other path is straight, and broad, and clear, and fixed, and stretches endlessly in the same direction. Choosing that path means remaining who he is, forever. Choosing that path means nothing about him changes, and nothing will ever change. Choosing that path means never selling his soul.

Choosing that path means slicing his own esophagus open from throat to stomach and letting the bile run over his bloody hands and drip to the ground.

Pentious.

Pentious and his sly sporadic humor, his magnificent megalomania, his clockwork kingdom in the sky. Pentious with his brilliance like lightning flashing in a black storm—Pentious with his blinding ambitions and his electric mind. Pentious with his many eyes like star rubies and his fangs that could fillet a man alive. Pentious and the organ he built himself—an organ that thunders like an orchestra—an organ that he uses to play ragtime just because Alastor is there to listen. Pentious who fits under Alastor's arm as he sleeps like he belongs there.

Choosing that path means giving up Pentious.

Mechanical eyes the size of plates built into the walls, mechanical eyes like star rubies, follow Alastor as he walks through the hallways. He checks his reflection in a glass panel to make sure he's still wearing his smile. He can't feel it.

He's got to make a choice, and he's got to make it in the next few minutes. He's got to choose whether he's going to give up Sir Pentious, or give up himself.

There's no question who he's going to choose.

Just let him put off the decision for a few minutes more.

###

**1951, Fifteen Years Before**

The first time the Radio Demon met Sir Pentious was in a bar that was half packed, half empty. Alastor was in the empty half, listening to a radio set behind the bar playing a cover of a Cab Calloway song. (All songs were covers down here, reconstructed and rerecorded from memory. Alastor often found himself hoping that some of his favorite musicians were terrible people and would die young. Hell did strange things to your priorities.) A semicircle of empty chairs and tables marked exactly how far away from him the rest of the customers were capable of moving without running out of space and having to sit on each other's laps. It was absolutely lovely to have the solitude in death he hadn't had in life.

Lovely, and occasionally _boring_.

A second glass of whiskey was set down next to Alastor's still unfinished first. He looked at it in surprise, and then at the bartender. "I didn't ask for another."

The bartender, standing so far from Alastor her back was nearly against the liquor cabinet, jerked her beak toward the other end of the bar. "Courtesy of him."

"Oh?" Alastor turned his gaze on the sinner standing several stools away. Well—"standing," if that applied to someone with a snake tail.

"A token of my gratitude," the snake said, exposing a mouthful of fangs as he grinned. "For making my job a little bit easier."

Alastor was used to receiving bribes, but generally from people who had somehow drawn his attention and were looking to undraw it. Nobody ever _tried_ to get his attention. "You certainly know how to make a first impression, my friend! It's been a long time since I've been greeted with a smile." Who was he? There wasn't an ounce of fear in his face. Maybe a hint of calculation in his eyes—but who in Hell wasn't calculating, besides the stupid and the terrified? This wasn't one of those ancient supernatural overlords Alastor hadn't toppled yet, he was certain he was familiar with the faces of all the reigning demons by now. Although it was sometimes hard to tell, Alastor was nearly positive this was a mere damned sinner. And yet, something about his face was oddly familiar, beneath the serpentine mutations... Someone he had known in life? The first who'd managed to recognize "the Radio Demon" as dearly departed Alastor? Clothes looked a little old-fashioned for that... "But I'm afraid you've wasted your money. I get my drinks for free here." He got his drinks for free most places. He got _most_ things for free most places.

The snake's smile snapped off, replaced with a miffed frown. " _Really_." He turned toward the bartender accusingly. "Then you can put that one on _his_ tab."

Alastor held back a chuckle as the studio audience laughed in appreciation. Oh, this _was_ a fearless one.

The snake's gaze snapped back to Alastor at the sound of disembodied distant laughter. "You're quite committed to your theme, Radio Demon." He slithered a tad closer. "By choice or by curse?"

Alastor raised an eyebrow. "Rather a personal question for a first meeting, don't you think?"

"So sorry!" the snake said, utterly unapologetically. "I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I?"

Alastor gave him a quick up-and-down, and then tapped his cane against the seat next to him. "Why don't you tell me who you are and what I did to help you out?"

Evidently waiting for just such an invitation, the snake sat—it was an elaborate process, placing his hands on the stool and arching his back to heave himself high enough to get a seat—and coiled the length of his tail around the pole of the stool. "Don't mind if I do."

###

**1966, Morning**

He's not surprised to find himself back in the black-tiled ballroom, gazing up at Sir Pentious's theatre organ. What a wondrous machine. And all done up in Sir Pent's favorite motif, pipes lacquered black and gold and carved with scale patterns.

He slides onto the bench. He's never played an organ before. How different is it from playing the piano? He attempts to plink out "The Mysterious Axman's Jazz" on the lowest keyboard. Sorry, lowest _manual_.

He's seen love scenes in picture shows—"It's a song of love." "Yes. But I never knew that until now. You know why?" "No." "Because I never knew what love was. Until now."—he's seen the men begging the women to stay, the women running into the men's arms, "the Walls of Jericho are toppling," "it was Beauty killed the Beast"—through comedies and tragedies and monsters and musicals, through Earth films and Hell films and poor Hellish remakes of Earth films, he's learned about love that so powerfully ensnares people that they can't possibly bring themselves to leave it.

Alastor doesn't think that's him yet. He thinks he can still bring himself to leave. His hard heart hasn't softened too much. He can break this off and it will only feel like ripping off his own arm. He's strong enough to perform that amputation.

But how? Vanish into the shadows and never come back? Cowardly, but tempting. It will never work though. Pentious knows all of Alastor's usual haunts, he'll come looking for him and demand an explanation. And if Alastor sees him _then_ —not just after dawn on a frigid day when he's terrified of losing half of himself in another person, but at one in the morning in a jazz club after a couple of drinks—then can he be sure that he won't cave in, lose his nerve, and go home with him again? He'd like to think he isn't like that, but he didn't think he was like the person he became last night, either. He can't be sure. And what if he does slip away from Pentious then? He'll run into him in another jazz club, another theatre, another opera house, another record store, another Cajun restaurant. He'll keep looking for Alastor until he knows why he vanished.

Then Alastor should do it directly. Walk back to his room, thank him for a fun time, tell him he doesn't want to have another, inform him that he's terminating their professional arrangement but will not interfere with his future endeavors, shake his hand, wish him well. And Pentious will nod in polite agreement and wish him the same— _hah!_ Sure he will. He'll demand an explanation. He might have been willing enough to accept that Alastor doesn't want to do anything sexual—after he'd explained it three different ways—but Alastor can't possibly convince Pentious that he doesn't want anything _else_ , because he made it abundantly obvious last night that yes, he does. Pentious will want to know why Alastor is leaving—because this is going to break his heart, too. (Something in Alastor's chest hurts at the mere thought of that.) "Because I said so" won't be good enough for Pentious. And if Alastor tells him the truth—lord, what a truth it is—that he's _afraid?_ that he's _scared_ to start this?—Pentious will probably try to argue him out of it.

The organ sounds sort of like a tuba, for some reason. Which is entertaining, but doesn't quite fit the tune Alastor's trying to play. He switches to another manual, discovers it's got some sort of marimba effect on it, and moves up to the next one. That one sounds more like what Alastor thinks a normal organ should sound like. He's tempted to start flipping the dozens of switches surrounding the manuals to see how that changes the organ's sound—he's _sure_ that last night he heard a set of _cymbals_ somewhere in this massive machine—but he doesn't know how any of it connects on the inside, he's not sure if flipping switches at random might risk breaking something by accident.

Here's the problem, no matter how Alastor tries to leave: Sir Pentious is _persistent._ If it wasn't for his pride, for his massacres, for his power hunger, he might still have damned himself with his sheer persistence. This man who tried to conquer Earth, went to Hell for it, and tried to conquer Hell. If he decides that Alastor is something he wants to conquer—something he _needs_ to conquer—nothing will ever convince him to stop.

Alastor knows Pentious will win that fight. And easily.

Alastor _wants_ him to win.

The keys operate differently on an organ than on a piano. When he plays the piano, hitting a key causes a solitary _plink_ sound—a hammer hitting a string—and then it quickly fades away, no matter if he pecks the key or holds it down. On the organ, the sound lasts exactly as long as the key is held down, like cueing someone to blow into a horn. Which he supposes makes sense, the pipes and all. It means he has to think a lot more about how long he holds down the key than he usually does. He appreciates the distraction.

If Alastor is going to prevent Pentious from coaxing him into a long-term relationship through sheer, stubborn, dogged, pigheaded, infuriating, inflexible, unreasonable, irresistible _persistence_ , then Alastor can't simply tell him this is over. It's not enough for him to tell Pentious that he's leaving. He has to make sure Pentious doesn't want to follow.

How does he do that?

Alastor trails off halfway through the song, staring at the five rows of keys in front of him, then looking up at the arcs of switches.

Oh, what the hell.

He flips half a dozen at random and starts playing again.

###

**1951, Fifteen Years Before**

Alastor's eyebrows rose. "Surely not _the_ Sir Pentious."

He beamed, clearly pleased that his name was still recognized. "If I weren't, do you think _the_ Sir Pentious would sssuffer some fool to ssteal his name?"

Not from everything Alastor had been taught about him. He'd never been a big history buff, but Sir Pentious had died less than a decade before Alastor was born—and Alastor had certainly been old enough to be cognizant of the wider world when some half-wit wanna-be conquerors had gotten their hands on one of the nefarious Sir Pentious's abandoned flying war machines and taken it for a joyride along the eastern seaboard.

"Well, well! What an honor it is to be approached by the world's first supervillain!" A round of applause from the studio audience, welcoming Sir Pentious to the show. "I thought I recognized your face under those scales. You know, eighteen years I've been down here and you're the first celebrity I've crossed paths with that comes from a history book rather than the Bible? But then I don't get much company. I wonder why!" The studio audience laughed.

Sir Pentious seemed to waver a moment over whether he was pleased or not by Alastor's greeting, but finally his eyes narrowed in indignation. "' _First_ supervillain'? You mean _others_ have been using my title up there?"

"No one of any note, just a few pathetic copycats who aren't willing to admit the Victorian era is over." (Alastor noted Sir Pentious's gaze flicking down toward his own clothes—two thirds of a three-piece suit, his waistcoat and frock coat both black and trimmed in an ivory yellow—undoubtedly the height of fashion in the 1880s, now over sixty years out of date. Had Alastor accidentally struck a nerve?) "When I died, there was no one alive who used the word 'supervillain' without knowing they were drawing a comparison to _you_. History is riddled with kaisers, czars, and tsars, but everyone knows there's only ever been one Caesar."

That seemed to assuage Sir Pentious's ego, because he was back to a wicked smile. "Good to know I left an impression." He leaned a tad closer—not close enough to encroach on Alastor's personal space, but nevertheless enough that Alastor wanted to lean away anyway, just in case that distance shrank even more. He'd never liked being touch, and wasn't fond of being in touching range unless _he_ was the one encroaching on someone _else's_ personal space bubble—and he'd found his bubble had been steadily growing the longer he was in Hell, as others voluntarily gave him a wider berth than he'd ever enjoyed in life. "I told you that you've assisted me with my work," Sir Pentious said. "I trust you can guess what that work is."

If it was anything like his mortal ambitions... "'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n,' eh?"

"Ha! As if they'd _let_ me serve in Heaven." With absolutely shameless glee, Sir Pentious said, "After the things I did, I doubt they'd so much as let me beg at Heaven's gates."

A sinner who owned his sins _and_ was proud of them. Far too rare—nearly everyone Alastor ran into either thought they didn't belong here or deeply regretted what they'd done to get here. At a bare minimum, they were sheepish about their new neighborhood. Nobody but Alastor seemed to _own_ it. Nobody _reveled_ in it. But here was Sir Pentious, adding, almost as an afterthought, "Although I don't think I'd even _try_ to get through the gates without an army large enough to flatten them."

Alastor decided, for the moment, he liked Sir Pentious.

"But you're right," Sir Pentious went on, "I do intend to take over Hell. I've put together some wonderful new machines since I made my mortal power grab. The only trouble with Hell is that there's so many little factions to deal with—these _overlords_ with their gangs and their turf and their strange little demonic powers. But you cleared half the board in one cruel swoop, didn't you?"

Ah, Alastor guessed where this was going. Sir Pentious wasn't the first to try it. "I can't say I wasn't paying any attention to the positions of any pawns on any boards," he said, again leaning a bit further away from Sir Pentious. "I'm just fond of flicking them off the table." Without any ambitions to do so, Alastor had apparently ended up an "overlord" in his own right merely by taking out so many of the others. While he didn't mind the perks that came with it—he never got this kind of deference in Louisiana—he couldn't stand the politics. _One_ pathetic sinner after _another_ , thinking they were important because they had the biggest house and had tricked a few other pathetic sinners into looking up to them, coming along to flatter him and wheedle him, offering bland favors to try to coax him into an alliance. None of them had anything interesting to offer. They thought he wanted power— _please_ —or riches, material goods—like he couldn't take what he wanted—or physical companionship— _hah!_ He struck deals with a few of the stupider ones.

They belonged to him now.

He wondered how stupid Sir Pentious was.

"Hhm." Sir Pentious didn't seem at all deterred by Alastor's unenthusiasm. If anything, his grin widened. (That was one thing going in his favor: aside from one or two slips, he was good at keeping a grin on his face.) "I've been following your career since you got here, Radio Demon."

"'Career'? Ha! Is that what they're calling 'wanton destruction and carnage' these days? Personally, I think of it as a hobby." The studio audience laughed.

"Not surprising at all," Sir Pentious said.

And _that_ intrigued Alastor. "Oh?"

"You haven't claimed any turf," Sir Pentious said. "You haven't amassed any minions. You broadcast your rampage—delightfully chilling, by the by—but if _I'd_ done that, it would be to show the survivors what I'd do to them if they didn't meet my demands. You? Made no demands. You just... _performed._ As far as I've seen, you haven't done a thing to try to capitalize on your infamy." He glanced at the two drinks left untouched on the bar. "Except get free drinks."

None of which was untrue, but unusual that someone had taken note of it. Alastor tilted his head with the crackle of a dial shifting frequencies.

"You don't share the rest of our ambitions, do you?" Sir Pentious asked. "Conquest, control, power—well, maybe _personal_ power, but not _political._ Hhell is a playground and ssinners are your toys, aren't they?"

A game show bell rang sharply. "Got it in one! If I were running a contest, you'd have the prize." There was a cash register noise convincing enough that the bartender—at the far end of the bar avoiding them both—looked sharply at hers to make sure they weren't messing with it. "Buuut I'm not. So I have to wonder, Sir Pentious, what it is you _do_ want from me."

"Absolutely nothing."

Alastor's eyebrows went up, eyes brightening with a low buzz. "Do go on."

"I want to rule Hell. I _don't_ want to fight anyone to get there that I don't need to. Nothing to gain, airships to lose, and it's ssso hard to smelt enough good steel down here." He hissed in annoyance, hood momentarily half flaring—he must have dealt with some losses already. Alastor had seen the rare airship in the sky far above—he wondered if they were _all_ Sir Pentious's. "If you have no political ambitions, then I don't see any reason why your and my objectives need ever conflict. Do you?"

For a moment, Alastor stared at Sir Pentious warily. Was that all he wanted? To confirm that they weren't rivals? Surely not. "No," he said, "no reason at all."

"Good," Sir Pentious said. "Then I'd like to offer you a deal."

" _That's_ a new one." Studio laughter.

"I know your reputation," Sir Pentious said. "I don't expect you to shake on it. You can show me whether or not you accept it by _acting_ on it."

"All right, shoot." Alastor picked up his second glass of whiskey, tipped it toward Sir Pentious, said, "Just in case I need to perform a spit take when I hear what it is," and took a long, slow sip.

"You don't strike me as the alliance type," Sir Pentious said. "Or the truce type."

Still sipping, the game show bell rang again.

Dryly, Sir Pentious said, "You didn't strike me as the _ventriloquisst_ type, either."

Alastor hadn't actually expected to need to spit take. He swallowed hard, slammed the glass down, and pressed the back of his hand to his mouth as the studio audience guffawed. He coughed. "I set myself up for that."

Sir Pentious's laugh was a dry hiss, _hh-hh-hha._ Once Alastor had straightened himself out—he wasn't risking another drink—Sir Pentious went on: "Here's my offer. As long as you don't directly thwart my schemes, I'll _hhhappily_ send opportunities your way for you to entertain yourself. I don't expect your assistance in any of my endeavors—but I do hope you remember that the more powerful _I_ am, the more I can offer _you._ Do with that as you will."

Ahhh. So that was it. He was afraid—but trying to make a show like he wasn't. "You know," Alastor said, "maybe things work differently down here. But from how I remember things working up top, usually it's the mob that approaches the mom-and-pop shop demanding protection money. This is the first time I've seen the shopkeeper seek out the mob to offer payment!" Studio laughter.

Sir Pentious's smug smirk twisted into a sneer. "A smart homeowner takes his dog out to play fetch before it gets bored enough to trash his living room."

Oh, _really._ The corners of Alastor's smile stiffened. "Am I your dog now, Sir Pentious?"

Sir Pentious eyed him carefully—strange red shapes floating in the air around him and all. "No," he said. "More like a ssstray that's good at opening other people's doorknobs."

The red glow brightened and everything else darkened. Several customers shuffled quietly but quickly for the exits. Alastor could destroy him. He could tear him to shreds and stuff him in a jar.

Instead he leaned in inches from Sir Pentious's face. Sir Pentious's hood flared and eyes bugged out. "You know," Alastor said darkly, prodding Sir Pentious's sternum with a sharp nail, "I think I might get to _really_ like you."

"Hahh. Good." Sir Pentious smiled shakily. It was the first sign of nerves Alastor had seen out of him since he approached. Far braver than most, Alastor concluded; but not _quite_ so brave he was _stupid._

Alastor straightened out again, all eldritch lights long gone. "But what can _you_ possibly do to entertain _me?_ I don't suppose you tap dance, do you?" Studio laughter.

"I don't know yet. You'll have to tell me what you're looking for," Sir Pentious said. "I'm sure with time we can work out something mutually satisfactory." And what did they have in Hell, if not more spare time than they knew what to do with?

Alastor rolled his eyes. "Well! If you just wanted to get to know me, you could have said so when you sent over that drink." He chuckled, picking up his second glass again.

"I'm not trying to make friends with you..." Sir Pentious's gaze flicked down at Alastor's clothes, and, apparently finding no fault with them, glanced back at Alastor's face before finishing, "... Gigglemug." (He suspected that, somehow, that was a jab for the "Victorian era" comment earlier. He just wasn't quite sure how he was being insulted.) Sir Pentious slithered off his seat and offered Alastor an ice cold smile. "I'd just rather not have you for an enemy."

"I'd heard you were a smart man."

Sir Pentious's smile twitched wider. Easy to flatter, this one. "Don't be a ssstranger, Radio Demon." He turned and wove his way between the empty tables toward the door. When he reached the crowd of customers, they quickly scooted aside for him to pass. Did the world's first and best supervillain command that respect around here, or had he picked up Alastor's aura via association?

Well, well. Entertainment in exchange for mercy. That was a strange new bargain.

He thought he'd accept it. For the time being.

He drained his second glass as the door swung shut behind Sir Pentious. The rest of his first glass remained untouched.

###

**1966, Morning**

He can sense it the moment Pentious comes into the room. He doesn't stop playing. He's trying to remember a tune he heard in a Marx Brothers movie and improvising an organ arrangement for it.

"So _this_ is where you ran off to, my dear," Pentious says from the doorway, as though he's only just discovered Alastor's location, when Alastor strongly suspects the organ is audible from every corner of the ship.

"I can't believe you caught us together," Alastor yells over the organ music, "when we were so careful to be quiet." Studio laughter.

When Pentious places his hands on Alastor's shoulder, he almost shivers. He almost tenses up. He almost tries to pull out of Pentious's hold. He almost tries to lean back against Pentious's chest and melt into him. But the Radio Demon is a professional. He keeps smiling, and he keeps playing, and he sings along to the song for his audience: "Hello, I must be going. I cannot stay, I came to say, I must be going. I'm glad I came, but just the same, I must be going. La-la..."

Pentious asks, "What is this?"

"Marx Brothers! _Animal Crackers_!" Alastor glances back at Pentious. He's got a long yellow nightshirt on and his dressing gown over it, and his hat blinking sleepily atop his head. "A classic picture show. Produced topside, I'm afraid, or else I'd suggest you track down a copy. Broadway on the big screen, an absolute riot." He picks up with the next lyric: "I'll stay a week or two, I'll stay the summer through, but I am telling you, I must be... going."

Pentious's hands drop off Alastor's shoulders as he slides onto the bench next to him. Alastor goes on, "I'm told they cut most of the musical numbers for the movie version. It's quite a pity! I hope _one_ of the brothers ends up down here, I'd love to learn the rest of the songs."

"What was all that about?"

Pentious definitely isn't talking about the Marx Brothers. Alastor plays dumb. "What was what about?"

"You, bolting from my room like you were afraid of getting caught there." Pentious elbows Alastor. Alastor hits the wrong key.

"All right. You've got me." He stops playing. "I have a confession to make." He turns to Pentious, offering his most gentle, pitying smile. (Even his gentlest smile still exposes almost all his fangs.) "I've never actually had any interest in you. I've been using you this whole time."

"Oh _really_." The look he gives Alastor is two-thirds _I'm waiting for the punchline_ and one-third worry that he might be telling the truth. "Using me for whhat?"

"To get closer to _this_ delightful dame." A wolf whistle plays somewhere as Alastor runs a finger along the white keys on the organ's middle manual. "You can go now, I think she and I would like some private time."

Pentious chuckles ruefully, and Alastor is treated to the sight of every one of his eyes rolling simultaneously. "Clever." He heaves another half foot of his tail onto the bench with him so he can sit higher than Alastor. "Sometimes you're too busy being clever to have a real conversation, do you know that?"

One corner of his mouth twitches, he's so surprised by that bullseye of an accusation. "Guilty as charged," he says. "What can I tell you? A radio host's job is to entertain his audience, not spill his heart."

"Then where's the off switch so I can actually talk to you for a moment, hhm?" Pentious reaches over and, with the faintest hint of a smirk, flicks the tip of Alastor's nose. "Does that do it?"

Alastor stares at him in disbelief. And then bursts out laughing so suddenly Pentious startles and flared his hood. Alastor has to bury his face in Pentious's shoulder—he's never going to stop laughing if he keeps looking at Pentious's baffled face.

He's nearly recovered when Pentious mutters, "Oh no. I broke the radio," and sets him off all over again.

He could stay here forever—his closed eyes pressed against Pentious's narrow shoulder, his temple against the side of his neck, his long ears brushing against his hood, laughing so hard he can't breathe. It would be so very easy to stay here. One of Pentious's hands touches his elbow, and Alastor slides both hands behind Pentious's back, pulling him close.

Just a second. Just a few more seconds. He slowly gets his laughter under control, presses his face to Pentious's chest, and takes a slow, deep breath in. Pentious has almost no scent; just something faint and earthy. Alastor holds the breath in, lungs full and tight, trying to preserve the faint scent and the moment as long as he can.

He nuzzles lightly against Pentious's shoulder until he finds the ridge of his collarbone beneath his shirt, and kisses it lightly. And then he pulls Pentious hard against him and stabs his claws into Pentious's back.

Pentious makes a shocked wheeze. He thrashes, fingers digging into Alastor's shoulders, trying to get free; the organ groans low pained notes as Pentious's tail drags over the pedalboard. "Alastor, _whhhat—_ "

"Now, now. Don't go." He stretches his smile so hard across his face it hurts. The edges of his voice buzz like a bad signal. "In a moment, this is going to be the only safe place in the room."

"Wh—why—?"

"I just told you." His voice pops and crackles. " _You_ heard me, didn't you?" He reaches behind himself with one bloodied hand, grabbing blindly for the microphone cane he left leaning against the organ.

"Sure I did," the microphone says. "Maybe he didn't catch it the first time."

"Once more, then, for the listeners just tuning in." He curls his fingers. Pentious gasps again in pain. "I've never been interested in you," Alastor hisses. "I've been using you this whole time."

"F-for what?"

The room around them sizzles as reality distorts, all white noise—and black noise, and red noise. " ** _Entertainment_ , of course.**"

The shadows hiding between the organ's pipes jerk free like jagged tentacles, twist around the wonderful musical machine, and begin crushing it. For a moment, head tilted up and jaw dropped, Pentious forgets to struggle against Alastor.

Far below the nefarious Sir Pentious's fantastic airship armada, great burning gashes open in Hell's ground. Lightless tentacles twist high into the icy sky, grasping for the ships, followed by hungry hoofed horned beasts.

Alastor draws his middle finger out of the puncture in Pentious's back and drives the bloody fingernail into his palm, just beneath the base of his thumb.

###

**1966, Last Night**

"You're still awake?" Pentious asked the question sometime between midnight and dawn. Alastor hadn't noticed Pentious stirring. In the red glow, the barely-open slits of Pentious's eyes were indistinguishable from the rest of his face.

"Woke back up," Alastor lied.

"Sss. Shut your nightlights."

Alastor huffed, but closed his eyes. He wrapped his arms a little tighter around Pentious, feeling the scales rub against his bare arms. "Good night, future King of Hell."

"Good night... what title do you want?" In the dark, Alastor felt the covers shifting as Pentious moved beneath them. "Princcce conssort? Duke of Buckingham? Gentleman of the Bedchamber?"

"Put me down for royal executioner-slash-court jester."

"Hha." Pentious's hand found Alastor's shoulder, traced it down to the elbow, out to the wrist; he slid Alastor's hand free of the covers, lifted it to his face, and kissed his palm, just beneath the base of his thumb.

###

**1966, Morning**

There's such joy, joy, joy in destroying. Alastor could laugh from it, could dance from it, could sing from it. He does a spin in a smashed egg shell, smearing yolky guts across a fallen wall. He's burning and freezing at the same time, the fog from his breath rising into the air with the smoke of the fallen airship.

" _Oh_ , that feels good!" He stretches his arms up, one hand curled tight around his cane and the other with claws splayed out, showing where the cuff of his coat has been stained by the blood dripping from his hand. "When's the last time I got to really cut loose like this?" He does a quick dance back across the fallen wall. A tune from some near-forgotten song echoes across the destroyed neighborhood and the ruins of Sir Pentious's flagship. "It's not _quite_ '33... but hey! That's a hard act to follow!"

He's so tired.

Somewhere, people are screaming. He let his beasts loose to terrorize the nearby populace once they'd finished their job. The sky is empty but for the white wintery haze and black oily smoke.

" _Alassstor!_ "

The music cuts off with the screech of a needle across a record. Alastor spins around. "Oh. You're still here."

"Whhere elssse would I be?!" Particles of rubble cling to Pentious's singed dressing gown. Black soot washes out the gloss of his scales, except for the two wet streaks down his cheeks beneath his eyes. He snarls up at Alastor, tangled in a pile of girders in the crater of the airship's wreckage, and points some sort of brass-plated bazooka at him. "This is the sship I was in _when you dessstroyed it!_ " Fangs exposed, eyes wide with fury, shuddering from the cold or the despair or the rage—Alastor can't tell. He's never seen such madness in Sir Pentious before.

Alastor clasps his hands calmly behind his back and digs the nails of one into the flesh beneath the little finger on the other.

"See how _you_ like it!" Sir Pentious pulls the trigger.

Alastor dissolves into the shadows and reappears standing on a tilted staircase, closing half the distance between them. A yellowish beam of light tears through the spot where Alastor was standing. Something in Alastor's chest flutters with affectionate pride. Look at that. Alastor underestimated Sir Pentious. He's _already_ invented ray guns.

The studio audience choruses groans of mocking disappointment at the missed shot, _awww_. "Is that really how you want to go out? Picking a fight with the demon that's already beat you?"

If anything, Sir Pentious's rage increases. He's always been so fearless of Alastor, ever since their first meeting. He aims his bazooka again; Alastor almost absentmindedly coils black barbed wire around it, dragging it from Sir Pentious's grip and crushing it.

Sir Pentious snarls in pain as the barbs scrape his arm. "You had no reason to do this," he spits. "You have no ambitionss! Who put you up to this? Voxss? He's been _burning_ with jealoussy over my mechanical eyes."

"Vox?!" A game show buzzer blares, wrong answer. "It's like you don't even know me!"

"Apparently I _don't_."

"If you're going to accuse me of working for another overlord, at least pick someone I like!"

"Then who? Rosie?!" Sir Pentious knows all of Alastor's friends. Alastor knows all of Sir Pentious's.

Two buzzers. "Far more probable—but no." He examines his nails, rubbing at the blood crusting around his index fingernail with the pad of his thumb. "You're the only overlord I've ever made a deal with— _hah!_ Sorry, slip of the tongue; I almost suggested that you're on an overlord's level!" The studio audience roared with laughter. "Whoopsie daisy. No, no, you're just another worthless lost soul. Your toys are so behind the times, destroying them is almost embarrassing. None of them have any _real_ power." He raises his cane as he speaks; gray, horned phantasms curl around it demonstratively. He has to lower his arm before Sir Pentious can see it's trembling with exhaustion.

"A deal?!" Sir Pentious hardly spares the specters a glance. "I would never have made—When did we—What are you talking about?"

"Don't you remember? When we met, you promised me entertainment in exchange for mercy."

" _That?!_ " Sir Pentious's jaws drops, working uselessly. "I—that was— _years_ ago, surely we're _long_ past that—!"

"We are!" Alastor cries, arms and eyes wide open. "We are leagues past that, _my friend,_ and do you know what I've found? You're _boring!_ You're irrelevant! You've got nothing to offer me!" His throat burns with buzzing static, the edges of his vision filling with white noise. "Entertainment? _Ha!_ You're just another tedious megalomaniac with stereotypical delusions of grandeur. Yawn!"

Sir Pentious shakes his head in disbelief. "No. We fought ssside by side. You hhelped me—"

"Sure! I thought helping a has-been villain overthrow the devil himself might be a little fun! You know—stir things up a bit." He twirls his cane with a sound like stirring a spoon in a glass. "Until I figured out you don't have what it takes. I'd practically be taking over Hell by myself! Then what would I do with the place?"

"I—But—Lasst night—"

"I took what entertainment from you I could." His eyelids slide down until his eyes are malevolent red slits. "I cut my way to your shriveled little heart... with one drop of false flattery at a time. A new form of murder! Try everything once, you know? I thought it might be fun. And do you know what?" The humanity slowly leeches off his face. All that remains is the cold surface of a radio and the fangs of a wild animal. " _ **It wasn't.**_ "

Sir Pentious's face crumples completely. Something inside Alastor's chest feels the way his skull felt when the bullet that killed him shattered it. Well done, Ally. You gave the performance of a lifetime.

The despair only lingers for a moment; and then Sir Pentious is pure wrath, hood spread, fangs practically dripping venom. He's like a beast, more serpent than Sir Pent. He writhes and slithers free of the collapsed girders, drags himself across the rubble by his hands, and launches himself at Alastor, fangs bared to strike.

Alastor easily sidesteps the desperate attack. He waits for Sir Pentious to crash down, kicks him onto his side, and jabs the tip of his cane into his neck. Sir Pentious only hisses, grabbing at the cane.

"Don't be stupid—you've already lost. Crawl off to lick your wounds," he says coldly. "A good massacre leaves me hungry. I've got enough eggs here to make omelets for days; don't tempt me to find out if my turtle soup recipe works with snake meat."

He lifts his cane. Sir Pentious pushes himself up on his elbows, looks at Alastor like he's considering one more murder attempt, but then just spits a wad of venom that sizzles when it hits Alastor's shoe. Alastor watches without moving as Sir Pentious struggles to crawl up to the edge of the airship's crater.

"And smile!" Alastor cries after him. "You already look like enough of a mess, a little smile might pull you back together a bit."

Sir Pentious glares down over his shoulder and hisses, " _You're_ not smiling."

A hand flies up to his face, feeling his cheek. His grip on his cane tightens. He can feel his blood trickling out around his palm and down the cane.

Sir Pentious's eyes narrow at him.

Alastor tries to force his smile back on and fails. What irony. All that fuss he put up last night—and in the end, after all that, here he is, standing completely naked in front of Sir Pentious. Naked and exposed and raw.

His voice is so distorted he almost can't understand himself as he says, "Of course not. You _bore_ me too much for me to fake it."

###

**1964, Two Years Before**

The first time Sir Pentious called the Radio Demon "my dear," they were at a jazz club. Sir Pentious, rabid consumer of all things modern though he was, had confessed he'd never gotten into jazz; the Radio Demon, feigning personal offense, had insisted he introduce Sir Pentious to the genre properly.

At that point, to Sir Pentious, Alastor was still "the Radio Demon." He hadn't given his real name yet. To make sure Alastor knew he wasn't half as intimidating as he thought he was, Sir Pentious called him "Radio"—or, on the rare occasions when he _really_ wanted to rub in how little Alastor scared him, "Gigglemug." Which Alastor had been assured was an _actual_ word for people who never stopped smiling, and he was willing to concede that maybe it _had_ been—a century ago. In return, to the Radio Demon, Pentious still had his "Sir." Anything less would be too familiar.

Alastor found a jazz club operating in accordance with the finest New Orleanian traditions of Storyville and speakeasies—which is to say, it was full of prostitutes and run by gangsters. He visited alone a few times, until the regulars got used to seeing the infamous Radio Demon without running for their afterlives and the proprietors figured out that he wasn't interested in being approached by employees who intended to offer him anything more salacious than another drink. Only then did he invite Sir Pentious to come along one night.

He wasn't sure whether or not Sir Pentious actually listened to any of the music, or if he completely tuned it out in favor of asking Alastor a thousand questions: about the club, its architecture, its style, its authenticity, whether he recognized anyone here from life, whether the performers were anyone important, how many of the significant jazz performers had wound up in Hell and who was presumed to have been lost to Heaven. Sir Pentious was interested in everything about the jazz club _except_ the jazz—but Alastor had never been unhappy to monologue to somebody. It wasn't quite the same as knowing that he had a vast invisible audience somewhere on the other side of a broadcasting microphone, but at least performing for an audience of one meant instant feedback on each clever quip and every interesting anecdote. And there was something relaxing about being able to talk about his life without once having to talk about himself.

That was the evening that Sir Pentious had become "Sir Pent." Alastor didn't remember what exactly he'd been saying at the time, but the abbreviation had fit the rhythm of his comment better than his full name. Sir Pentious hadn't even reacted; so he'd kept using it. Alastor had quickly concluded that he was far from the first to use the nickname. Maybe Sir Pentious had adopted it himself; maybe on some level he thought of himself as "Serpent" first and "Sir Pentious" second.

Alastor didn't know. He'd assumed that the surname "Pentious" had come first—it was a weird name, but what did Alastor know about the family names of villainous Victorian nobility? When he was alive he'd only been vaguely acquainted with "Sir Pentious" as a historical figure, he'd hardly looked into his family tree. Alastor actually had no concrete reason to assume that "Pentious" was any part of his real name at all. The whole thing could have been made up, title included. Instead of—as Alastor had assumed—Sir Pentious being made into a half-serpent in Hell as a mockery of his name, perhaps Sir Pentious himself had seized the name and in death the identity he'd claimed for himself had been made manifest. Most of the mutated sinners weren't so lucky, but a few were. The Radio Demon had been, deer bits aside. Why not Sir Pent?

Meanwhile, Alastor mused, Sir Pentious still didn't know the Radio Demon's real name either, did he?

When they left the club, Alastor said, "Well, it's been a long time since I've had that much fun at a jazz club without a gunfight breaking out. And that's without even getting to hear any of the music." He gave Sir Pentious a sideways glance. Chatterbox.

Sir Pentious scoffed. "So come back another night! The music won't change. There are _thoussandss_ of these historical memorials all across Hell." He waved a hand vaguely, as if brushing off these little relics of the mortal past. "We could come back in a century and everything will be exactly the same."

"Touché." He had a point. It wasn't like any of the owners, the employees, the musicians, were going to retire or move away or die. The only thing that was going to evict them was some future crop of younger, meaner sinners; and even at that, the current tenants would just end up somewhere else in Hell, carrying their little pocket of blurred 1910s/1920s Nawlins nightlife around with them. Still, though. Alastor had wanted to hear jazz _tonight_. "But I do hope you'll let me take you back here a little sooner than next century, Sir Pent."

Sir Pentious's hood flared slightly, from hanging straight along his neck to shoulder-width, before smoothing back down. Alastor didn't have time to try to work out whether that was a good reaction or not before Sir Pentious said, "Well, _you_ know how the life of a supervillain is—city blocks to flatten, rival warlords to take down a notch—but let me know when you're interested and I'll find somewhere to squeeze you in, my dear."

The sudden escalation to pet names threw Alastor off so much that he lost track of their banter; for a second he just stared at Sir Pentious, eyebrows raised and mouth partially open, static hissing through the gaps between his fangs.

And then he realized that Sir Pentious wasn't quite making eye contact with him, but rather, smirking, pointedly looking just _over_ his eyes, toward the top of his head—where his tiny horns were. Oh. Oh! _My deer_.

Alastor's intangible studio audience laughed so loudly that sinners across the street stopped to look—and then hurried on their way when they saw who it was that was laughing. All right. The pun made the pet name worth it.

The next time they met—in a moody, seedy bar, the kind that had a dozen booths in separate cubicles with walls up to the ceiling to maximize the number of dark corners customers could brood and/or conspire in—Alastor told Sir Pentious his real first name.

In return: "Obviously, 'Sir Pentious' wasn't the name on my birth certificate. But it _was_ the name on my death certificate."

Which, as far as Alastor was concerned, was the same as being told his real name.

"Is the 'Sir' part mandatory?"

"Maybe not for close friends."

"Do I make the list?"

Pentious smiled.

###

**1966, Evening**

"Talk about 'only on a cold day in hell'! Today's top story is a surprising shift in local politics. The apparent alliance between Hell's two toughest mortal overlords, the Radio Demon and Sir Pentious, literally came crashing down in a flaming wreck this morning, when just before eight the Radio Demon took out Sir Pentious's airship fleet. The skies of Hell are oddly empty without a single airship in sight for the first time since 1895. The Radio Demon couldn't be reached for comment, but tonight we have one of Sir Pentious's surviving minions in our studio with a press release from the supervillain concerning his plans to rebuild and a sworn declaration of vengeance—"

Alastor flattens his ears to his head beneath his hands, fingers curled in his hair, his back against a locked door. He convulses with sobs he can't let out. His scream sounds like nothing but ringing in his ears.


	2. After

**1978, Twelve Years Later**

One of the dubious benefits of being granted a wide berth by everyone he crosses paths with is the fact that it's very easy for Alastor to spot the people who don't fear him, because they'll walk straight past him without the slightest deviation in their path.

"Dubious" because to this day, Sir Pentious remains one of the fearless ones.

On Earth, Sir Pentious was the innovator and inventor. In Hell, he was both the first to find a way to convert someone's half-memories of the latest worldly technology into workable machines, and the sole weapons inventor that was producing original instruments of destruction rather than simply replicating the ideas that came in with the dying. He was so used to being on the cutting edge—he was so used to _being_ the cutting edge. Until Alastor blunted him.

It's been over a decade, and he hasn't caught back up with modern technology. No matter how much progress he makes, it never seems to be quite enough to let him match the trinkets the latest freshly-dead punks know how to make.

Alastor never expected it to take him this long to stabilize.

He's been trying to modernize his public image lately, Alastor knows. Maybe because he can't quite modernize anything else. He's been experimenting with every slang term he's heard since the 1950s and every one of them sounds unnatural coming out of him. Alastor sees Sir Pentious on the television sometimes—he scrabbles back into the spotlight whenever he can, even if it's just a thirty-second on-the-scene interview about a battle he just lost—and every time, Alastor has to fight not to wince at the things that come out of his mouth.

But it isn't until now that he's changed his look.

Alastor would have spotted him in the crowd anyway—it's impossible for Alastor not to spot him, sometimes he thinks he sees him in the corner of his eye and turns to find nothing there—but this time, as the passersby on the sidewalk split to keep a respectful distance from Alastor, it seems as though the crowd has parted specifically to reveal Sir Pentious to him.

In all the time that Alastor knew Sir Pentious, his fashion sense never changed. Always that strangely animate top hat that surveyed all Sir Pentious did from on high; always the oh-so-sophisticated nineteenth century vests, coats, and cloaks that had at some point elegantly transitioned from "old-fashioned" to "vintage."

Now, only the hat remains. The rest has been replaced by a simple jacket. It's the color of wet asphalt. It has butter yellow pinstripes.

Alastor remembers Sir Pentious used to make fun of his red pinstripes.

The cut of the jacket, the shape of the collar, even the style of the bow tie, are all 20th century, but they're nevertheless painfully out of date.

They're all identical to Alastor's coat.

The only difference is the length; Sir Pentious's new jacket is far shorter than Alastor's, stopping right at his vestigial hips.

Alastor remembers teasing Sir Pentious for how long his old-fashioned frock coats were.

Alastor pretends he isn't looking at Sir Pentious as they pass each other. He wonders if Sir Pentious is pretending the same. He wonders if Sir Pentious notices that the bottom of Alastor's coat is beginning to fray; he hasn't been able to bring himself to care about maintaining his wardrobe. Now he wishes he had.

For a split second, they pass close enough to each other that Alastor could catch Pentious's waist in his hand and pull him close.

His heart feels like it's struggling to beat for the first time in half a century. It feels like it's being crushed too tightly to ever beat again.

He's sure he hears a low hiss just before Sir Pentious re-merges into the crowd behind him. Maybe it's his own staticky exhale.

Alastor remembers, the first time they met, flippantly commenting about wanna-be supervillains who don't know the Victorian Era is over. He remembers telling Sir Pentious that he's behind the times, irrelevant, worthless. A has-been.

He wishes he'd chosen any other way to push him away.

###

**1957, Nine Years Before**

"On the one hand, one doesn't want to get too caught up in _fantasizing_ about the future instead of planning how to _achieve_ it," Sir Pentious said. "On the other hand, if I claim the throne without a plan to keep it, I won't stay there very long. Power doesn't consolidate _itself_. So naturally I've put _some_ thought into the post-takeover political landscape of Hell. Unfortunately, Lucifer has reigned so long—uncontested, it seems—that I've got no historical precedents I can use to guess how the public might react to a power grab, but—"

"All very important," Alastor said, not looking up from stirring his pot of brown roux, "but doesn't answer the question I asked."

Sir Pentious rolled his eyes. "Your question was silly."

"Is that any way to talk to the man cooking your dinner?" He made a show of rummaging in the nearest cabinet. "Do you think rat poison works on snakes?"

Sir Pentious rolled his eyes even more dramatically. "Fine, if you're going to be like that: _yess_ , I've thought about how I'm going to redecorate the throne room."

They were in a kitchen, Sir Pentious sitting on a counter keeping Alastor company as he cooked. It wasn't Alastor's kitchen. It wasn't Sir Pentious's, either. It was, however, attached to a restaurant and fully stocked. It was also accessible from an alleyway door that had splintered _very_ easily for Alastor ("Look ma, no hands!" "Put that hocus-pocus nonsssense away, I could do the same thing with a crowbar") and it had emptied very quickly when the chefs saw the Radio Demon's wicked grin.

So _now_ it was Alastor's kitchen.

"So?" Alastor asked. "What's the plan?"

Sir Pentious pulled his tail up onto the counter with him, the middle drooping over the edge like an arboreal snake draped over a tree branch. "I'm going to hire Michelangelo to paint the walls," he said, gesturing around himself as though he could already see it. "Depicting me as a ssserpent god, overthrowing Lucccifer himsself and sseizing his crown!"

Alastor kept his laugh silent. The studio audience did not.

Sir Pentious pouted. "What's the point of ruling Hell if you can't indulge your most megalomaniacal dreams of grandeur? I want to be depicted as a usurping god. If I've overthrown the King of Hell, who can say I'm _not?_ "

"A fair point! And an interesting philosophical question. What _does_ make a god? Or a King of Hell, for that matter. Is it an unchanging part of one's nature, like being an animal versus being a tree, or is it just a job title anyone with the right skills can claim?"

"Yes, _precisssely!_ " Sir Pentious splayed a hand across his chest. "The idea of the divine right of kings to rule has eroded over the centuries, why not challenge the idea of a divine ruler itself? Why _sshouldn't_ it be a job anyone can seize if he has the ambitions and ability?"

"I think it's not something you can change. Seems to me like one of those existential things," Alastor said dismissively, and glanced over at Sir Pentious just to see his irritated glower. He winked. "But you keep dreaming—megalomaniacal's a good look on you. Besides, I can't think of anything more entertaining than watching you try to prove me wrong."

Sir Pentious grumbled, "Keep talking like that and I'm going to leave you out of my Michelangelo frescos."

"You're breaking my dead heart. Does it help if I say I'll be even _more_ delighted if you succeed?" For a moment, he was a bit too caught up in making a witty retort to fully process what Sir Pentious had actually said. "Hold on. Do you really plan on featuring me in this throne room of yours?"

"Well." Suddenly, Sir Pentious appeared to be allergic to eye contact. "Obviously, a _proper_ tyrant cultivating a cult of personality will feature his strongest supporters in the works glorifying him, won't he? And I'm not going to cover the walls of my throne room in _eggs_."

Well. That was something to think about. Alastor was used to seeing posters in every point of the Pentagram warning people to avoid him—very flattering, of course—but that was very different from being painted up on someone's wall, Sistine Chapel style, like some figure of worship. He wasn't the type to crave big monuments to himself; low grade notoriety was more than adequate. But something about the thought of being featured in that hypothetical fresco was... strangely appealing. Not the being-painted-on-the-wall part, but...

Maybe it was the fact that Sir Pentious _wanted_ him painted on his wall.

He tried not to think about it too hard. " _Is_ Michelangelo down here? I never would have guessed."

"I don't actually know, but it stands to reason, doesn't it?"

"The man who painted the ceiling in the Vatican? You don't think he made it upstairs?"

"He hated painting it. That's got to count for something." Sir Pentious leaned forward, gripping the edge of the counter to keep his balance. "You've been stirring that forever and you haven't even put anything in it yet. You're not messssing with me, are you?"

"I'm making the roux."

"That doesn't mean anything to me! How long does that take?"

"Oh, half an hour, three quarters?" Alastor eyed the color of the mix critically. "I think this one's going three quarters."

Sir Pentious groaned. "How long's the whole process going to take?"

"About four hours."

"Four hours!" Sir Pentious dramatically collapsed on the counter. His hat flopped off his head and looked deeply alarmed as it rolled toward the edge before Sir Pentious caught it and pulled it back on. "I'll have wasted away by then."

"Come now."

"I'll be nothing but ssscales and bones."

"I think I saw some bread rolls in a basket by the door."

"No, that's fine, I'll wait." Sir Pentious pulled himself back upright. "But your banter had better be _sssparkling_ , Radio."

Alastor waved his whisk like a magician's wand; a tinkling bar chime sound played. "Sparkling banter is my life's work. _And_ afterlife's work."

"Not the massive bloodbaths?"

"You know those are just a hobby. I'll leave the _professional_ bloodbaths in capable hands like yours." He checked to see whether Sir Pentious looked properly flattered. (He did.) "Just for you, limited time offer, for the next, oh..." he eyed the roux again, "three hours and forty minutes, my banter will be absolutely scintillating."

And for the next three hours and forty minutes—relating anecdotes, interviewing his guest, telling terrible jokes, supplying the studio audience and sound effects, even performing his own musical interludes—he was in the best radio host form he'd been in since he'd died. Perhaps even better.

###

**1984, Eighteen Years Later**

For years after Alastor died, he slept on his back, one leg twisted under his covers and the other bent with the knee in the air, one arm draped over the bed and the other slung loosely across his face so the crook of his elbow rested over his nose like a sleep mask.

He heard on the radio years ago—some educational program—that over half of Hell's denizens slept in the same position they'd died in. He didn't remember the exact statistic now. Sixty, seventy percent. At the moment he'd died, he'd been in no fit state to try to keep track of how he was laying, but he remembered struggling to shield his head. How humiliating, for that moment to be immortalized in his sleeping habits.

He decided that if anyone asked how he died, he would say he'd been asleep outside with his arm blocking the sunlight when a radio tower fell on him and gave him postmortem superpowers.

He still sleeps like that sometimes. But now, more often than not, he shifts in his sleep onto his side, arms wrapped around his chest, knees partially pulled up. If he has a second pillow, he wraps himself around it, clutching it tight to his chest.

Pathetic. He's pathetic.

He wonders if it means that some important part of who he was died on that night.

When he sleeps in a bed with more than one pillow, he tosses the others on the floor.

###

**1963, Three Years Before**

Their original informal agreement had simply been that Alastor wouldn't interfere with Sir Pentious's work— _not_ that he would assist it—and in return, Sir Pentious would offer Alastor opportunities for entertainment.

Over time, they both quietly came to realize that assisting Sir Pentious's work was Alastor's favorite form of entertainment. Alastor's kills had always been clever, and careful—in life, careful he wouldn't be caught, in death, careful he wouldn't stir the ire of the few beings more powerful than him—but his ambitions never extended beyond the kill itself and his plans never extended beyond the disposal of the body. Sir Pentious's attacks were far less spectacular shows than Alastor's self-introduction to Hell had been, but far more strategic—acts of calculated, far-thinking, far-reaching greed.

"You really should make some plans for your own future, Radio," Sir Pentious once said, half exasperated and half amused, when Alastor casually invited himself into a weapons auction to ask Sir Pentious whether he had anything fun coming up that Alastor could get in on. He'd protested that he had no future _to_ plan, no interest in developing any high ambitions like Sir Pentious's, and Sir Pentious replied, "I don't mean that. You're going to be dead for the rest of your life. It'll feel even longer if you don't have objectives to work toward. If all you want is to be entertained, fine—but make some _invessstments_ in ongoing entertainment for yourself, why don't you?"

Smile quirked to one side, eyes half-lidded, brows raised, he said, "I'm invested in _you_ , aren't I?"

Alastor adored watching Sir Pentious lay out his handmade maps of Hell as he gleefully explained his plans: where he was going to hit next, why he so desperately needed that target in his clutches, what new wonders he'd be able to accomplish once he had those resources. And he adored the looks on poor surprised sinners' faces when one of the airships they'd thought belonged to some eccentric retired warlord opened fire on them; he adored the looks on their faces when the airship lowered just enough to let none other than the Radio Demon himself disembark to help soften up the target.

Sir Pentious claimed mines, factories, machinists, the things and places and people he needed to speed the production of his airships and weaponry. He had a serpentine strand of a kingdom weaving wildly through Hell, too scattered for anyone to notice how much turf he truly held—anyone but Alastor, at least—its disparate outposts connected to each other via airborne transport routes, airships carrying personnel and supplies back and forth. He sailed over the other overlords' heads all but unnoticed. They dismissed his boasts of imminent conquest as the hot air of a has-been. Because he wasn't yet conquering Hell, they never noticed how efficiently he was conquering the means to conquer Hell.

Alastor had never much cared about any politics that didn't directly affect his own life, but he found himself eager to watch the war begin, to see Hell awash in the sort of flames that the living world ascribed to it. He wanted to watch Sir Pentious burn down a kingdom, overthrow a demigod, and install a ghost as the king of an entire plane of reality. He wanted to stretch himself again; he wanted to remind Hell why every block was plastered with scrawled posters that read "Beware the Radio Demon." He wanted to see Sir Pentious's top hat reshaped into an onyx black crown. He wanted to _be there_ when Sir Pentious was crowned.

When Alastor tagged along on Sir Pentious's raids, he liked to watch the view from the bridge as they flew, marveling at seeing the world from such a spectacular vantage point. He'd never gotten to see such a view in life. It made him wonder what the living world looked like from so high above the ground. Sir Pentious could probably tell him, if he ever cared to ask; but he never did. It seemed somehow too revealing to admit that he had missed out on such a view in his life, when Sir Pentious was the one who had _invented_ such views—like some part of him was worried such an admission could somehow let Sir Pentious deduce far more intimate secrets about him.

Back in the days when the eggs still kept a respectful distance from Alastor—well after he'd begun occasionally tagging along on Sir Pentious's raids and quite soon after one of them had received a demonstration of what exactly he did with people who dared attempt to touch him without an explicit invitation—he and Sir Pentious had a conversation about Sir Pentious's plans for after he'd conquered Hell.

His plans, of course, were more conquest.

"Oh?" Alastor tilted his head, intrigued, although he didn't look away from the view slowly passing below. "I could get behind that. I'd love to go to Heaven."

" _Hahh!_ You and everyone else down here!" Sir Pentious's titters drifted down from his post at the airship's controls. "I think you missed your chance about thirty yearsss ago."

Alastor rolled his eyes. "I meant as a _tourist_. You know, just to see what it's like. Find out if everyone up there got turned into animals too or if all they get is wings and halos." He turned away from the view to pantomime strumming strings as a harp sound effect played.

"Can you actually play instruments like that? Just by..." Sir Pentious pretended to play a harp as well.

Alastor obligingly played back the same harp sound effect for him. "If only! Imagine the time it would save me tuning my violin." He leaned back against the airship's vast window and crossed his ankles. "So? How about it? You _are_ taking me with you to Heaven, right? You're going to need _somebody_ to entertain the troops while they're abroad, and who better to perform for them than the Radio Demon himself?" He wagged his eyebrows.

Sir Pentious slithered around the controls (Alastor hoped this thing knew how to fly itself) and down the odd climbing tree he'd invented as a stairs substitute for his serpentine anatomy. "And will this 'performance' involve the brutal slaughter of as many of Heaven's denizens as you can reach?" He slunk up to Alastor's side.

"I said I'd _entertain_ the troops, didn't I? I think that calls for some..." he spun a finger in the air, summoning gleaming sigils into the air that sucked the light out of their surroundings, "... fireworks."

A smile stretched across Sir Pentious's face. "It's high time you get a chance to let loose again," he said. "But you were invited anyway, of course. I wouldn't dream of conquering Heaven without you."

Something about the precise way Sir Pentious said that sent a strange thrilling chill through Alastor's limbs, made him feel momentarily lightheaded and euphoric. When he was himself again, he'd been staring at Sir Pentious for just a moment too long, dead air hissing through the radio when the program should be live. The show must go on, Alastor, say something.

He blurted out the first thing that came to mind: "Good, I'll look forward to it. Who knows, maybe I'll even get to see my dear old mother for the first time in decades! If you like my cooking, you'll _love_ hers." He immediately clamped his jaw shut and pressed his lips tight together with a muffled record scratch. Did he just say he wanted to introduce Sir Pentious to his mother.

Sir Pentious didn't seem to notice. "Is she in Heaven?"

Alastor pressed his lips tighter. Did he just start talking about his family to Sir Pentious.

Too late to take it back now. Don't show any weakness, act like it was intentional. "Either she's still alive—she would be in her eighties now, _very_ impressive—" a round of studio applause, "—or she's in Heaven. If she was _here_ , I'd know about it by now. She'd take one look at all these Radio Demon flyers, hunt me down, and go, 'Ally, you foolish child, just _what_ sort of trouble have you gotten yourself into _this_ time?'"

Sir Pentious snickered.

Alastor's smile softened slightly. "But no—I'm quite certain I won't be seeing her down here."

Sir Pentious nodded—and a faraway look crossed his face. Alastor tipped his head curiously, lowering the static with a crackle, waiting to see what that look led to. After a moment, Sir Pentious said, "My son's probably up there, too."

Alastor's eyebrows shot up. A son. He never would have guessed. He'd heard passing mentions of a wife, estranged, but...

"Unless he followed in his father's footsteps after all," Sir Pentious went on. (After careful consideration, Alastor decided it wasn't the right time to make a joke about footsteps, re: Sir Pentious's tail.) "Even if he _is_ down here, I'm not surprised he hasn't called at one of my airships. But he probably isn't."

Sir Pentious broadcast every emotion across his face like a neon sign. There was old, old grief seeping in around the edges of his mouth, in the lines around his eyes. Something inside Alastor ached at the sight of it. He wondered how his own mother had looked when she'd been told the news about him. He wondered how much she'd learned about his less savory hobbies—and how much of it she'd believed. He hoped she hadn't been the one asked to identify his body. He hoped she hadn't had to give him a closed casket funeral.

It was Alastor's job to bring the mood back up. "Well, I gave you a fact about my mother: she cooks, and better than me. You owe me one about your son."

Sir Pentious immediately perked up. "Yes, I suppose that's fair. Let's see..." He thought hard, his eyes—all of them—rolled up toward the ceiling as he rummaged through his memories. At last, his face lit up. "Oh, you'll appreciate this." Smirking impishly, he said, "His favorite animals were mongooses."

Alastor's laugh almost drowned out the studio audience's. " _Sir Pent_ -ious and his son, the mongoose lover! The irony! The domestic drama! I love it!"

Sir Pentious smiled wider at Alastor's laughter, then glanced at the landscape passing below. "Oh! We're drifting off course." He bolted back up to his controls and corrected their path.

Alastor followed him, ignoring the nearby stairs provided for the Egg Bois in favor of carefully walking up the makeshift snake ladder like he was walking along a fallen tree trunk, and sat on the floor next to the controls with his legs dangling over the edge of the platform. "How much longer to our destination?"

"Another ten minutes at mosst."

The length of Sir Pentious's tail curled in a loose arc on the floor around Alastor's back, so that the tip ended up next to him. Alastor met the gaze of one of the eyes near the tip and winked. Sir Pentious winked back. For all that his existence was defined by constant chatter, he didn't think he could have begun to explain why that delighted him so much.

" _Ssso._ 'Ally,' hhm?"

Alastor suppressed a wince at himself. Did he just reveal his childhood nickname to Sir Pentious. Play it off. "Sure. And if you prove you can keep it to yourself, maybe someday I'll even tell you what it's short for."

"So I only get to call you that if no one else is listening?"

" _You_ don't get to call me that at all." Alastor placed a hand over his heart dramatically, "That's my _mother's_ name for me. You'll have to come up with your own nickname."

Sir Pentious laughed. "I think I'll sstick with Gigglemug."

After that job, Alastor started spending some of his copious free time researching Heaven. He'd never paid much attention to that distant, unreachable moon, and he always kept to himself during the annual exterminations. Heaven had never been a place of interest to him.

But say, hypothetically, Sir Pentious really was capable of taking over Lucifer's throne—and the more time Alastor spent down here, the more he thought that he didn't see any practical or theological reason why he _shouldn't_ be able to. If Alastor could take out genuine Hell-born demons, why shouldn't any other human be able to, with enough firepower? And if demons, then why not fallen angels?

So: hypothetically, Sir Pentious could take Lucifer's throne. Then why not Lucifer's supernatural attributes as well? A fallen angel once had an angel's access to Heaven; could that access be reverse engineered? And what better engineer to reverse it than Sir Pentious? He would need assistance, of course—he was all machine, no magic—but Alastor was certainly enough of a master of the occult to help fill in the gaps in Sir Pentious's knowledge. With both of them contributing their fields of expertise, who in the universe could stop them?

Not even Alastor knew exactly what it would take to get into Heaven from Hell. The day they'd need that knowledge was still a long way away, certainly—but _finding_ a route to Heaven could take just as long. Better to start the research now.

And once they _did_ reach it, what would they be facing? What sort of army guarded those vaulted heights? There were scant few forces in Hell that Alastor couldn't deal with, but even fewer of Hell's forces possessed weapons that could permanently kill the already-dead—and all of those weapons, to Alastor's knowledge, came from Heaven's exterminators. Alastor had not directly pitted himself up against the exterminators, and he thought it would be sensible not to try.

It made sense for the supposed private kingdom of the purported ruler/creator of everything to have forces that vastly outmatched anything Alastor had ever witnessed in Hell. Even if they could manage a conquest here, Heaven could still be, both literally and figuratively, an uphill battle.

Every scrap of information Alastor could obtain on Heaven could be used to start building up plans for their eventual invasion. Historical records, old newspaper articles about the exterminations, interviews with direct survivors, a few feelers put out here or there looking for a cast-aside extermination weapon so Sir Pentious could pick it apart and see how it worked. Alastor was even resigning himself to the fact that sooner or later he was going to have to pick up a _Bible,_ of all the boring, embarrassing things—all things considered, if you were reading the Bible after you'd been damned to Hell, wasn't it too late to do you any good? (cue the laugh track)—but he supposed it would be stupid _not_ to check it for information on what kind of military force Heaven was packing.

He'd been quietly pursuing this avenue of research for some weeks before he realized exactly what he was doing:

Planning his future together with Sir Pentious.

###

**1999, Thirty-Three Years Later**

Everywhere Alastor goes, he sees Sir Pentious's eyes. Glowing magenta-red, staring from the headlights of cars, shining in spotlights down from skyscrapers. Once, every invention in Hell worth mentioning came from Sir Pentious's own blueprints. He gave Hell electricity. He gave Hell cars. He gave Hell machine guns. Alastor can't imagine how much drearier Hell would be if not for the charitable efforts of a solitary supervillain, steadily dragging it into the twentieth century.

Even Lucifer's own private luxury limousines came straight from Sir Pentious's makeshift mobile workshops—repainted from black to white, Sir Pentious told Alastor, the upholstery switched from snakeskin to suede branded with the Magne family's personal crest. Alastor has wondered why Lucifer never did anything about Sir Pentious's obvious ambitions for his throne, and narrowed it down to three possibilities: he was never concerned because he knows that his ex-angelic powers vastly outmatch anything any mortal soul could ever possibly to create; he has a secret fondness for fellow rebels attempting to usurp divine authorities; or, he decided it was worth the risk in exchange for the amenities that Sir Pentious offered in the meantime.

There are eyes everywhere in Hell. Growing out of the woodwork like tumors, glowing in golden stained glass. But Alastor always knows which ones are Sir Pentious's. The exact shade, the exact shape, the way they shine, the cog-like frames they're so often set in.

Once, joking, Alastor asked Sir Pentious how many of the eyes worked. Serious—but still smirking—Sir Pentious leaned close and hissed, " _All of thhem._ " And Alastor immediately understood why he all but gave away so many machines.

These days, far fewer of the eyes he sees are Sir Pentious's. Rusting black cars with snakeskin seats sit in rubbish-piled yards in front of dilapidated houses, missing their tires, supported by cinder blocks. But even if they're less numerous, Sir Pentious's eyes are still around. They're still everywhere Alastor goes.

He tries not to stare into the eyes. He tries not to avert his gaze from them. All of the eyes work, after all; he doesn't want Sir Pentious to see that Alastor still thinks about the snake watching him behind those eyes. He masters the art of glancing past them like they're not even there.

But when he knows one of those eyes is watching his back, he finds his performances are more dramatic, his voice more animated. The studio audience laughs and applauds more often. Alastor sings more.

With the knowledge of those eyes watching him, he operates by a few different rules than he used to.

First, when he meets people, if he doesn't intend to immediately destroy them, he tells them his first name—and that way, their learning his name holds no significance. It doesn't matter that they know; the information never spreads far. He remains "the Radio Demon" to the overwhelming majority of Hell. And when he hears someone say his name, he doesn't have to flinch at the fact that they know something so intimate. It's no longer intimate. He made it that way.

Second, if he gives little details about his mortal life to people he barely know and certainly doesn't care about, then those details hold no emotional power. His mother's cooking is changed from a private revelation to minor trivia. Who would have guessed that the best way to keep people at arm's length was not to stand across the room from them, but to bring them in close enough to hug and then make them want to take a big step back? It worked both metaphorically _and_ literally.

And, finally, he's decided not to believe that it's possible to reach Heaven from Hell.

He's already wasted enough of his time on that fantasy.

###

**1962, Three Years Before**

Centuries of competing social mores piled on top of each other in hell, like stratified layers of soil showing different geological eras that had been dumped in a bucket and shaken until they were an indistinguishable mix of dirt. Perhaps there were even millennia mixed together—Alastor suspected many of the oldest souls might have been taken out by the yearly heavenly exterminations, but how did he know there were no four-thousand-year-old Egyptians walking down the street who'd decided that they preferred jeans to linen skirts?

There were souls from civilizations where men were told the only thing they couldn't do with a man that they could with a woman was produce a baby, and they walked hand-in-hand with each other; across the street, there were souls who had been told so firmly that they'd go to Hell for sodomy that now that they were _in_ Hell they refused to believe that it was actually for that guy they beat to death in a bar fight back in 1104. There were seventeenth century women who'd lived their lives silently with their "lady friends," waited silently after death for their companions to join them, and then either continued to live silently with them or else eventually concluded with sad satisfaction that their loves had gone to Heaven instead; and there were seventeenth century women who'd awoken with scales and feathers and horns surrounded by brimstone and trash, decided that there were no reasons left to follow the laws they'd been taught in life, shaved their hair, tore off their skirts, and added a new tattoo to their biceps every time they learned a new slur for women who made love to women.

And there were Victorian gentlemen and New Orleanian fellows whose mortal lives had never overlapped and who never talked about where they stood with each other because they'd both been taught that wasn't the kind of thing you talked about.

From what Alastor eventually gathered, both from Sir Pentious himself and from other sinners who'd died his contemporaries, in their lives it had been acceptable for a man to love another man, as long as he kept it private and kept his trousers on (or, at least, was never caught with them off). You could feel whatever you wanted, and others would nervously tolerate your right to feel it—you just couldn't leave any proof, and couldn't say so out loud. And it didn't hurt to get married to someone who didn't mind how often your "dear friend" came over for dinner.

In Alastor's life, there had been a couple of speakeasies where people who wanted to enjoy the romantic company of their own sex or wear the clothes of the opposite sex could go. Alastor occasionally went to them, finding them inexplicably comforting—but, not interested in romancing, fornicating, or crossdressing, he went as something halfway between a comrade and a spectator. In the middle of the night he had played songs on his radio station by musicians in New York about trying to kiss a girl and realizing you were kissing her brother instead, and he never lost his job for it; but he was never in a relationship, never wanted to be in one, and so he had no idea how they kept their lives private in front of their neighbors unless it was by the same method by which bartenders kept the locations of their bars private in front of the cops: by denying everything.

And so when people asked Sir Pentious about being spotted with the Radio Demon the other week, he said they were allies, collaborators, friends, whatever struck his villainous fancy that day; he would smugly confirm that they were in cahoots, but never in what manner or to what extent, as was the fashion in his day, and then he let them wonder about the rest.

And the Radio Demon, cheerily, sneeringly, answered questions about his association with Sir Pentious from those brave enough to ask the same way he would have answered a cop asking about a moonshiner neighbor: I don't associate with him, I only barely know his name, we end up in the same general area and might exchange a couple of words once in a while but we've never had a real conversation.

They would give these answers one right after each other. While sitting right next to each other in a bar. While the burly bearded bartender behind them blatantly flipped through his porno mag to get to the glossy color centerfold picture of some kind of fuzzy pink spider-bunny-guy jerking off five men at once and entertaining himself with his sixth hand, like that was a perfectly regular thing to admire at work in front of customers. All these strata of human history dumped in one container and shaken up until nothing could be sorted out.

When the former most feared man on Earth and the current most feared man in Hell brush off a question about what they're doing in a bar splitting a bottle of bourbon, they aren't asked follow-up questions.

So they never got their story consistent. And they never would.

###

**2019, Fifty-Three Years Later**

There are Victorian gentlemen and New Orleanian fellows whose mortal lives had never overlapped and who never talked about where they stood with each other because they'd both been taught that wasn't the kind of thing you talked about.

"Well, well, well. _Look_ who it is harboring the _sstripéd freak._ We meet _yet again_ , Alasstor!"

He reminds himself that everyone listening knows his name; he gave it to them specifically to ensure that it wouldn't seem special for someone to know it. He tries not to focus on how lithely Sir Pentious arches his back as he hisses his name—on how expertly Sir Pentious keeps his malicious smile curled around his face.

These days, when people ask Sir Pentious about the Radio Demon, he says they were allies, collaborators, friends—until the Radio Demon broke their truce and stabbed him in the back.

"Do I know you?"

And the Radio Demon, cheerily, sneeringly, answers questions about his association with Sir Pentious the same way he would have answered a cop asking about a moonshiner neighbor: he acts like he has no idea who that is.

"Ohhh, _yes_ you do!"

They never got their story consistent. And they never will.

He wonders if Sir Pentious realizes he's only making himself look worse by harping on about a prior association that the Radio Demon denies. He makes himself look like he's too insignificant to be worth remembering. Dozens of times Alastor has wanted to _tell_ him that, to _tell_ him what he's doing to his own reputation, how he's making himself look. Alastor only wanted to chase him away, not turn him into a _joke_ —

He feels like it would be far too _kind_ for him to say something like that to Sir Pentious now.

"And this time, I have the element of... _surpriiisse!_ "

And now that a cannon with a barrel wider than Alastor is tall is pointing at him, he feels like it would be far too kind for him to let Sir Pentious off with a warning, too. Especially with witnesses. He hopes Sir Pentious has another airship stashed away somewhere. It's been over half a century, and Sir Pentious _still_ hasn't worked his way back to the cutting edge—still hasn't reclaimed the title of "overlord." Alastor doesn't want to set him back to square one yet again. But if he must.

Digging his nails into his own hand until it bleeds has the added side effect of focusing his mind on his pain, on his anger, on his joy. There's always a joy, joy, joy in destroying. Focus on the joy and the anger and not on who's being destroyed.

Maybe it will be another fifty-three years before Alastor has to destroy him again.

###

**2016, Fifty Years Later**

Sometimes Alastor wonders about the differences between Heaven and Hell.

Heaven is probably full of the kind of people who are kind to people. Heaven probably doesn't _need_ to have any special features or rigid rules to be a more pleasant destination than Hell—all it needs is more pleasant people than Hell. The dull, boring people. The good people—endlessly good good good. The happy people.

That's all it takes to make Heaven rewarding. That's all it takes to make Heaven _Heaven_.

What does Hell have?

Alastor's heard a quote recently: _hell is other people_. He's heard another quote, _you are your own worst enemy_.

Alastor has heard of a concept called "karma," too—he thinks he was told it comes from Hinduism, but his religious education had been sporadic and New Orleanian and didn't stretch much farther than that. (He still hasn't read the Bible. No point.) From what he's been told, the idea behind karma is that what you do during your life decides what you will be reborn as in your next one, either moving up or down from being human. His gut instinct is that the revelation of Heaven and Hell's indisputable existence probably disproves reincarnation—but, really, can he say that for sure? What is the afterlife if not "the next life"? Have they not been "reborn" here in forms that somehow echo something about their last lives? What happens to the dead that Heaven exterminates, and how does Alastor know they _aren't_ reborn somewhere else?

And then there's the second way he's heard people use the word "karma," which he thinks probably doesn't have much to do with Hinduism and means something more akin to "poetic justice." It means that if you're wicked, the universe will retaliate against you. You might never be arrested, you might never receive a direct punishment for your crimes, but somehow, events will conspire to ensure that you receive as much suffering as you've caused.

There are no tortures in Hell, despite the lavish detail Dante spent writing about them. No icy lake for the treacherous, no river of boiling blood for the murderous. There are just awful people, being themselves.

Maybe that _is_ their punishment. Maybe Hell is the place where all the karmic retribution that doesn't fit into the living world finally gets its opportunity to play out. All you have to do is put all the people that like to hurt each other in one spot, and let them do the rest. Let them punish each other.

What is the perfect ironic punishment for someone like Alastor—the kind of punishment that needs no imps with pitchforks, no divinely constructed prison cell? The kind of punishment that can be meted out by another human?

He lived his life without love. Romantic love, anyway. He felt familial love; he loved theater, radios, murder, singing; he rather loved himself and the life he'd made. He never felt the absence of romantic love as a lack. He transitioned seamlessly from "there's no rush, it will happen eventually" to "it might happen eventually" to "it probably won't happen" to "it had better not happen." He was free of what seemed to him to be a thorny rose bush that tangled around other people's rib cages and wrists. True, the thorns could be filed off with work; true, a few lucky vines seemed not to have thorns at all; true, roses were pretty to look at, no doubt pretty to adorn oneself with as well. But Alastor thought gardening was tedious.

If the purpose of Hell is not to give him a punishment based on his specific sins, but based on what would personally hurt him the most, then what better punishment than to introduce him to a man he never should have met, a man who had died nearly a decade before he was born—the only man capable of weaving barbed wire around Alastor's heart?

Sir Pentious defines himself by his inventions. His identity is bound up in the knowledge that he is _the_ trailblazer, _the_ creator, _the_ force pushing forward human technological process. When he heard of a new creation in the living world, he replicated it and improved it; when the newly dead gaped at his creations and confessed they'd never seen anything of the sort in the living world, he cackled and assured them it was the merest tip of the iceberg. He was ahead of the entire human race, both living and dead, and his lead grew by the year.

What more fitting a punishment for him than for someone to trip him up, drag him down, hold him back, let everyone else race by? What more fitting than trapping him perpetually a few months behind the cutting edge—just far enough back that no matter how hard he works, for the rest of eternity, he will never quite be able to catch up again?

Perhaps Dante had been right about the boiling blood but wrong when he said the sinners sat inside the river rather than that the river flowed inside the sinner. Perhaps love is Alastor's personal torture.

Perhaps Alastor is Sir Pentious's private Hell.

###

**2020, Fifty-Four Years Later**

"This is Tom Trench—"

"And Katie Killjoy with 666 News, starting you off this morning with our weather forecast! If you've taken a single step outside today, you've probably already noticed that it's cold as balls. Isn't that right, Tom?"

"It sure is, Katie. I haven't been this cold since the winter of—"

"No one cares, Tom. So! You know what that means! We want to hear all about the unlikely things that happen to you today! You can catch our attention online with hashtag #ColdDayInHell, or email us at metro@666news.hel—and our interns would like me to remind our viewers that I don't monitor our email address, _they_ do, so knock it off with the dick pics."

"And with _that_ mental image haunting us all, let's move on to today's traffic report..."

Alastor stares out through the upstairs window of the Happy Hotel, head tilted as he listens to the crackling morning news broadcast. The fog of his breath on the glass is almost the same color as the sky. The only part of him that's warm is his knuckles, pressed up against the hot cup in one hand.

He hears someone stumble up the stairs and straightens his head, and with a heavy click the news turns off.

"Thought I heard you." Angel Dust trudges far too close to Alastor for comfort, thunks his forehead against the glass, and shuts his eyes. Alastor relinquishes the window spot in favor of taking a very large step back and away from Angel. "Ugh."

"Late night, I take it? Up with the night owls?" A hooting sound underscores his question.

"Yeah, sure, up with somethin'. Hey, coffee machine downstairs ain't on and you're the only one who knows how to work the thing. Think you can...?" He lifts one of his limp arms to pantomime flipping a switch.

"I suppose I have no higher ambitions today. Very well." A pause. "It's on."

"You're a fuckin' show off." Angel does not remove his forehead from the window. Evidently groping for an excuse not to leave the cold glass just yet and deciding small talk is as good a one as any, Angel says, "How come it was off? Thought you always grabbed a cup in the morning."

"Not on cold mornings." Alastor glances down at the cup in his hand with the little string for the tea bag hanging over the rim.

"Yeah? Cold days special?"

"In a sense." Alastor looks past Angel. Out the window, in the distance, through the haze, he can just barely see an airship in the sky. "I hate them."

He takes a sip of his tea and suppresses a grimace.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed the fic and you're on tumblr, [reblogging the post linking this fic](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/189639835557/cold-day-in-hell) would be deeply appreciated! Tumblr hides posts with links to other sites from some tag searches, so the best way I can reach new readers who might enjoy the fic is with your help! Thanks!
> 
> (And whether you reblog or not, I always love to receive y'all's comments, either here or on tumblr!)
> 
> ETA 1/23/2020: There's now a short sequel to this fic, [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22371976)—Sir Pentious's perspective, set immediately after the pilot episode. I'm lowkey planning a much longer sequel but first I wanna finish two other slow burns I'm working on and see if maybe I can procrastinate until season 1's come out and I have more canon material to work with.
> 
> ETA 2/8/2020: And another fic that takes place _during_ CDIH, [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22625050)—Sir Pent's perspective, set in the late 50s, the first time he realizes he's attracted to Alastor. Obviously, he got there a lot earlier than Alastor did. This fic is 95% guaranteed to be NOT SAD AT ALL unless you stop and think about the fact that CDIH happens.


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